The transcriptions provided on this website are generated using artificial intelligence (AI) technology and may contain significant errors, including instances where the AI system can incorrectly add or invent content that was never actually spoken in the original audio. These errors may include fabricated medical terminology, non-existent treatments, incorrect demographic information, or other invented content that was not present in the original recording. These transcriptions of radio shows discussing integrative cancer therapies are provided solely as part of Yes to Life’s educational resources to help cancer patients and their families learn about additional therapies and treatments that may be available to support them before, during, and after medical treatment. Neither these transcriptions nor the original audio recordings constitute medical advice or endorsement of any particular treatment, practitioner, or clinic. By accessing these transcriptions, you acknowledge that Yes to Life does not guarantee their accuracy, completeness, or reliability, and expressly disclaims liability for any errors, omissions, or misinterpretations. All medical decisions should be made solely in consultation with qualified healthcare professionals. These transcriptions are protected by copyright law and are the property of Yes to Life. If you identify errors or inaccuracies, please contact us immediately at office@yestolife.org.uk for correction.

Robin Daly
Hello and welcome to the Yes to Life show. I’m Robin Daly, your host for today’s show as well as for the last 400 plus shows that are all still available on Listen On Demand. I’m also founder of the UK’s integrative cancer care charity Yes to life that supports people with cancer in finding out all about integrative medicine and how it could help. Luke Watts is someone who’s also working hard to introduce new resources of integrative care to people with cancer and today I’m going to be speaking to him about a brand new service he’s about to launch as part of his initiative The Cancer Coach. Wonderful. Thank you for having me. So I think this is your first time on the show, although I had featured the cancer coach before your service. Today’s an opportunity to find out about a brand new service that you’re launching very shortly, an online service, which includes a seven module course. So you start out by telling us who this is for, what it’s called and what they can expect to find.

Luke Watts
Wonderful. Well, again, thank you very much for the introduction. And yes, we have been featured on your program before. The Tree of Life was a response to many people who felt that they needed a structured, consistent approach to understanding how lifestyle can impact a cancer diagnosis. So like a lot of people who are interested in the impacts of lifestyle, if you were to search for this yourself, there is a lot of conflicting information out there. And then there is. And, you know, with all the due respect to the people that put this together, it can be very overwhelming for somebody who has maybe just been diagnosed to try and understand, well, what diet is the optimal diet? How do I exercise? You know, I am feeling emotions that I haven’t felt before. How do I process them and how do I create coping skills to deal with this? You know, people keep telling me that I should sleep and rest. But how do I actually do that in my condition and situation and other areas? So we we really went on a journey with, you know, some oncologists, some experts and behavior scientists. We worked with cancer advocacy groups. We worked with survivors and we worked with health coaches to put together a program called Tree of Life. And Tree of Life is a seven part, as you said, a seven part modular program where we introduce consistent what we introduce topics around, say, emotional well-being about how to modify and change lifestyle behaviors, how to look at nutrition, exercise and sleep, how to and how to be aware of the role of your gut health in digestion and elimination and what role having an optimal gut can have in improving our immune system and responses to other threats. And then we also talk about the environment. So clean air, clean water, household detergents. And we are, as I said, you build on the knowledge of the previous module. So it becomes a beautifully put together series. And by the end of it, the idea is that you have a very comprehensive toolkit of resources to to really try and implement a fundamental lifestyle shift that has been shown. The evidence has shown can actually impact a cancer diagnosis.

Robin Daly
So yeah, interesting. So, I mean, you talk a lot about anti-cancer lifestyle, which, you know, you and I, this is kind of familiar territory, but I imagine there’s lots of people out there like, hey, what anti-cancer lifestyle? What on earth is that? That doesn’t sound like cancer treatment, you know. So if you just had to tell somebody quickly, well, what are you actually on about here?

Luke Watts
No, it’s a really good question and we appreciate this as an interesting term and we did focus group the hell out of it and we also came up with risk reducing and there are all these other different phrases but essentially people who, well let me start with something at the beginning which is the idea that cancer is a genetic disease. We’re becoming more and more aware that that’s not the case and it’s maybe like to 10% of all diagnoses now are actually directly linked to genetics. The vast majority is driven by lifestyle and environment so within that we have learned that there are certain protocols or areas of lifestyle that we are in complete control over that we can actually put into to reduce the risks of developing cancer. So if 90% of cancer risk is in lifestyle and environment we want to be able to look at that as an anti-cancer approach to well-being and as I said we approach that through diet, through exercise and the modules that we spoke about earlier but essentially an anti-cancer lifestyle is available to anybody doesn’t have to be just somebody with cancer. Quite often Robin you know this as well that somebody who presents with a cancer diagnosis is quite likely to also be presenting in other diagnosed medical conditions and a lot of those are precursors or can be considered aggravating conditions leading up to cancer. So somebody who follows our program who might not have cancer could be experiencing lifestyle challenges and they could be as subtle as I can’t walk up a flight of stairs without you know going out of breath or I’m not sleeping well or my skin looks bad or you know my sexual appetite and health is down. A lot of these things are lifestyle indicators that things aren’t really going too well so you don’t have to wait to get cancer before you do our program but a lot of the things that we do around the metabolism the metabolic aspects of this disease can find themselves also in heart disease, diabetes, a lot of autoimmune conditions as well as I said just more regular lifestyle dysfunctions that we just mentioned.

Robin Daly
Well, yeah, I always think one of the great strengths of a lifestyle mention is the fact that it’s the same message, whether you haven’t got cancer yet or you’ve got cancer or you’ve had cancer. Actually, the same things apply all the way through. It’s a consistent message. It’s not, you know, because, you know, conventional treatment, you go through this weird phase where like, OK, normally you’re expected to look after yourself, but then you have to go and have treatments, which are very, they actually undermine your health. So you’ve got to deal with the treatment. It’s an extra thing, extra challenge that’s thrown your way. And so, you know, this single message of what makes for good health is extraordinarily important. I think it’s come to the fore in Covid, where everybody’s realized that actually your background level of well-being actually predicts the other outcome from lots of challenges you have in life. And if you’re already kind of rubbish on the wellness front, you’re likely to do badly when the challenges come along. So, yeah, a great message. And of course, it does home in on actually the answer to cancer as not being, finding ways to treat it is to stop it happening in the first place. So prevention really is where all of our attention should be going, given that it’s a runaway situation we’re dealing with. OK, so at the top level, what would you say are the different elements of your service?

Luke Watts
So we have built the program in a way that should appeal to the vast majority of the population, and we’ve done that, as we just spoke about earlier, by making the program accessible to people that don’t have cancer. So yeah, anybody who is living a less than optimal life can benefit from doing this program as a cancer prevention kind of tool, or just an illness or disease prevention tool. Going through, if you have been diagnosed, and you alluded to this earlier, Robin, where a lot of the treatments made available at the moment are what we would call systemic. And so while they might have cancer fighting properties and cancer cell killing properties, most treatments can’t distinguish between a healthy cell and a cancerous cell. So quite often people have a lot of side effects and complications from their treatments. Again, integrating lifestyle can reduce a lot of those side effects and complications. So the program is eminently suitable for people that are going through treatment. And then there’s the recovery aspect. People who have finished treatment emotionally as well as physiologically are in a very vulnerable position. This program is an ideal place to pick up and start your new life again after treatment. Living with cancer after treatment is something you’re always going to have to be aware of. The fear of recurrence is very, very real. But what we can do is to take a bit more responsibility and ownership of our own lifestyle to try and reduce the risks of recurrence of cancer, but also any other chronic illness. I think I was reading recently that cancer survivors are eight times more likely to develop heart disease because of the disease. So there’s so much that you have to be aware of. And then the final another population we want to be working with is caregivers. A caregiver is a functioning well looked after caregiver is so important to that individuals going through treatment. They can really, we have seen the evidence that they definitely improve treatment that caregivers themselves are then vulnerable to beginning sick themselves because of the stress and everything that’s related. And a lot of caregivers are actually holding down full-time jobs. So it’s a very, very challenging part. So Tree of Life is looking at prevention, treatment support, recovery, and caregivers. And you ask about the features. So part of it is making sure we are available for every stage or every phase of that life journey. But we’ve also been very aware of learning styles. There are a lot of online courses. There are. So what we wanted to do was to ensure through our behavior scientists to ensure that that skills transfer is at the point in which that person can benefit the most from it. So some of the features are, yes, it’s an online course. The program has been developed in a way that does provide the most optimal learning experience by going through the individual lessons, individual videos.

Luke Watts
But for those who don’t want to do it that way, they can sign up for instructor-led classes. So they can sign up what we call group education. So if you don’t want to go through a traditional online course of going video one, video two, video three, you can subscribe and sign up for a live session with one of our health coaches and it’s a group education. We have toolkits and resources that appeal to people that are more visually accepted to learning, auditory, kinetic. We have probably one of our biggest features is the community part of the program. So anybody who signs up to the program can meet up and talk with other members of the program. And so it can be a very lonely experience and that feeling of isolation. We know support groups are really valuable. So you will be able to join a community program. Part of the Tree of Life is you can join a community and you can meet other people going through the program at the same time.

Robin Daly
Yeah. Well, I’d like to talk about that some more. That’s a very important aspect. Yeah. Interesting. You’ve got these, you say these different learning methods to suit different people and a lot of that comes from the fact that of course you already have a service of coaching, live coaching anyway. So it’s kind of you’re already equipped in that area. So this is an extra to what you’ve already done. This is a new strand of learning. So yeah. Interesting. So, you know, this is an information-led exercise. This is all about information. As you said at the outset, there’s loads of conflicting information. There’s loads of disputes about what’s what. What’s the basis of the information that you’re sharing? How do you actually come by it? Absolutely. So, you know, as a personal background, I’d like to

Luke Watts
involved in oncology and other diseases for over a decade now, probably closer to 15 years now. So we built up a body of research and evidence about again lifestyle and environment and its impactfulness when it comes to either reducing the risk of or dealing with a chronic illness including cancer. What we’ve, so getting access to information hasn’t been the challenge. The challenge is being making sure that there is a step-by-step approach which is consistent to what was said previously. So yeah, so that’s been the real challenge is not necessarily trying to find the evidence that this works, it’s trying to piece the evidence together that it makes sense as you go through it on a timeline. So we have been working with oncologists and I know I’m going to get her name wrong so you’re going to have to help me here, help me. Dr. Penny, that’s it, we love Dr. Penny on this to life and yes, so Penny’s been great in kind of leading part of our strategy of getting this information together and then I think also another yes to life friend is Dr. Catherine Steele who’s a professor of behavior sciences at Leicester University. So she’s been involved in again getting the information and making sure that it is presented in an optimal way that people are going to be able to learn from this. And what we’ve attempted to do in Tree of Life is not necessarily just present the information in the sort of what to do but we’ve tried to give people the how to do. So a lot of the information that we offer is actually practical tips on how to implement this in your environment. So you know in practical terms that could be recipes that contain some of the active known anti-cancer properties which are normally anti-inflammation, anti-inflammatory based properties. It’s about how to for those who might not be naturally aware of meditation or just haven’t ever done it before we’ve got these guided meditation audio clips that people can kind of start listening to and build a practice of meditation. Meditation like a lot of these things they’re not silver bullets, they’re not events, they’re processes. So a lot of this is about how to and then we’ve also put a lot of work in the why. So we have collected as I said all of this body of research and information explaining where these sciences come from. We’ve made that available in Tree of Life. So if you want to read the research paper that Mayo Clinic did or MD Anderson did or Harvard Medical did or whoever has basically put all that effort into explaining the relationship between that module of lifestyle and its impact on cancer is there, is there. So you know we’re not hiding anything. It’s not an individual’s dogmatic approach. This is a copy of information that we have collected globally and have put it together in this very what we think to be a very easy to understand and easy to implement process.

Robin Daly
I mean on that thing about the disparity of opinions on things that I mean I don’t know what your feeling is whether you feel that things are improving or things are getting worse in terms of a body of knowledge which is accepted if you like. Do you think that’s great?

Luke Watts
It’s a really interesting question. I think generally speaking as a population, we seem to be more polarised in all of our thinking, not just medically. There’s a lot of polarisation and I do worry that it’s not necessarily the smartest people, it’s the loudest. And that does bother me, you know, in politics, in healthcare, in education, it just seems to be the loudest people are driving the agenda, not necessarily the smartest. I think from where we’re coming from, Robin, if I would say that where I feel that there is a disparaging is there’s not enough done in prevention and recovery. I have a lot of respect for the charities, you know, Cancer Research UK and Macmillan and all those wonderful, wonderful people. I feel, however, that the money seems to be spent in treatment. And I think when I watch campaigns in the UK that say every 90 seconds and somebody with somebody who’s going to be diagnosed with cancer, I think that was the one of the last or I’m hearing another one, which every 90 seconds is like 365,000 people a year. And I’m hearing that the same people are then saying, and that’s going to go up to 500,000 by the year 2040. The way that it’s delivered is almost as if we have to accept that as a reality. And that bothers me. Yeah, that really bothers me. So I would like there to be more. I’d like people to attack that and go, whoa, whoa, whoa, you’re saying is 316 is going to go to 500. Therefore, the money really shouldn’t be on treatment, right? Shouldn’t we be looking at trying to reduce that 140,000 growth that you’ve already said is going to happen? I don’t like the way that we’re being conditioned as a population to accept. It’s not. I don’t like that. So I’d like to see more be done in prevention. If prevention is too difficult in terms of a human for us to get our head around, then I would like that money or I’d like that research to go into recovery and relapse prevention. So there is so much that can be done at the point in which somebody finishes treatment. Yeah. And there is precedent for this, Robin, we have done it with heart disease. We’ve seen particularly men take more ability for their diet and their exercise post heart disease. But I don’t believe it’s enough attention in cancer. And I want to address that. I can’t, you know, our tree of light is to kind of say, and I’m sorry for going on, but it is a bit of a…

Robin Daly
Yeah, it’s a good point.

Luke Watts
It’s one of my things. So I’ve worked with people, I’ve worked with people that have cancer for a very, very long time. And it’s not uncommon for me to hear people say at the point in which treatment is happening, or treatments is just recently finished, it is not uncommon for me to hear people say, I would rather die than have to do that again.

Luke Watts
Well, that’s kind of where I think we should be picking people up and sort of saying, OK, well, let’s let’s let’s let’s run with this and let’s see and start implementing things. Fear is not a sustainable way to change habit and behavior, but it can be a starting point for people. And I’ve said to people before, I can get a man who eats meat three times a day to go raw vegan if I tell him that’s going to help his cancer. But unless we can change behaviors, then that person is likely to revert back to time once that fear has worn off like willpower. So it has to be through behavior change. It has to be through small steps. And as I said, if we can’t get people if we can’t influence people to prevent these diseases from happening, I really would like to see a more systematic approach to catching people treatment and after treatment and trying to get them into, you know, reversing or reducing their risk of further disease, including recurring cancers.

Robin Daly
Well, I think that makes a lot of sense on many fronts because I think you’re right, changing population habits broadly in the way that we might like to see is a tough cookie. But as you say at that uniquely teachable moment when you’ve had an experience like that, there is an opportunity for massive change there and many people take it even without any prompting at all. It’s quite common, of course, for me to come across people who have transformed their lives in response to having had cancer. So it makes complete sense and of course the more people you have who are living, let’s call it an anti-cancer lifestyle after having had cancer, the more of it there is about people living that way and it making sense to more people. So it’s going to become more pervasive just because of that is that people will learn hopefully from the other people who have actually had cancer and don’t want to go there again and what are they doing about it. So yeah, it’s interesting. It’s a very good point you made there. Yeah, so with this thing about the polarisation there and the body acknowledge, I mean my feeling over 20 years is that there is more ground to stand on than it used to be. It used to be kind of this thing is going to either kill you or save your life. It really was polarised and now there is a more reasoned debate around the fact that various things are actually, they’re just good. They’re positives for human beings. The amount of research that’s built in the last decade is extraordinary around lifestyle and overall well-being including cancer and that’s a great thing in a way because it does take some of the polarisation out of it. It takes some of the sting out of it I think and a lot of things that were just outright alternative medicine 10 years ago and now sensible lifestyle measures, it has changed. So I think that’s entirely wholesome and I’m very pleased to see it.

Luke Watts
Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, a word out there to those oncologists who sometimes feel that people like I are disrespecting them. We’re not at all, you know, we understand that they have not had this element of training, but there are people out there that are trained in lifestyle medicine, particularly, and they’re not necessarily MDs. And I think, you know, I came up with this phrase a little while ago that I’m kind of developing, which is a parallel pathway. And I think the way that we need to address, oh, we spoke about it, actually, didn’t we, once over coffee, I think. So, yeah, I do think that, you know, intervention medicine, the stuff that you get at the hospital, needs to be one line of a parallel train line. And the other line, the other rail, should I say, needs to be people that are trained and experts in prevention and recovery. And they need to be of equal strength and equal line to keep the train on track. And I think at the moment, we have to keep the analogy going, a monorail system, very out of date. And that train is getting heavier and heavier. And that burden on that line is getting strong, you know, heavier and heavier, and it’s getting weaker and weaker. And until we split that line and have two rails running equally strong, providing equal support to us as a health population, that that’s got to be the holy grail. And, you know, and saying, I don’t want, I do sometimes feel that on colleges think I’m not, but the burden of responsibility on them is too great, I believe. And it needs to be shared. It needs experts in prevention and recovery alongside those wonderful schools.

Robin Daly
integrative medicine of course that’s what it is bringing together of all the resources there are. Absolutely. Working together for the benefit of the patients. Yeah absolutely. Okay so you’ve got these seven modules in your course do you want to just give us a little tour what they are I mean I’ve done module one so I know but anyway tell our listeners

Luke Watts
Wonderful, wonderful. Well, the first thing to say is that, yeah, I’ll go through the modules and explain probably the reasoning. So module one is about stress management and emotional well being. And it’s also the largest module and then and probably the most important module, because we are at this point trying to discuss your values. Now, in any behavior change situation, if we go against what we truly believe we deep, deep down in our soul, we will never get to the point of long term sustainable habit change. So module one is about identifying your values, what is important to you. And there’s no right or wrong answer, but it is really important to understand where you are at and what you are prepared to do. And we can we can do that within stress management as emotional well being, because it’s one of the stress management is one of the areas where if we can implement tools early and quickly at that point, then people can start to look, was it see the wood through the trees? Was it see the trees through the wood?

Robin Daly
I see the wood for the trees.

Luke Watts
As I said, so, you know, by dealing with some of those stress management, by putting in some stress management techniques and coping skills, people start to then be able to take a deeper breath and work through it. So that’s module one. Module two, so, yeah, so module two is about behavior change. So this is where we really go into trying to understand where you are in your contemplative nature of change. So, you know, for a lot of people, it could be in what we call contemplative, meaning that, okay, I’m interested, but I don’t quite know what I’m doing. And, you know, we need to know where you are in that contemplativeness of change. And also for you to know how you are going to go through those stages and to be aware of them as you go through the behavior change stages. So that’s the first two modules. Module three is about nutrition. Now, when people talk about an anti-cancer lifestyle or any kind of health benefit, nutrition is the sexy one. It’s the one that everybody tends to lead towards.

Robin Daly
people look outside the box it’s like well what should I be eating

Luke Watts
Absolutely. But we don’t want you to get into nutrition until you’ve understood your values and where you are in your behavior change aspect. Our modules are locked. So you can’t get onto module three before you do module two. You can’t do the module one. Because we build on what you have learned in modules one and two. Your workbook that you fill out during the program will allow you to build on what you have identified, what you have learned about yourself in modules one so then module three sexy nutrition becomes more relevant to where you are in one of my values, where am I my stages of change. Module four is about exercise and movement. Incredibly important. No, not even even more so for those who are going through a chronic illness where they probably feel less inclined to move and to exercise. But we talk about why exercise is important. But what’s so great about this module is the how to. So we have a series of instructor-led videos for you to watch where you can find a program to match where you are at right now, even if that means you’re in bed. Even if that means that you are in bed right now, you can still do arms, legs, shoulders, feet, ankle. There are exercises of movement that you can do where you’re at. One of the reasons we wanted to go into this is, again, if you’re looking at it for yourself, you can get overwhelmed. Not all of us, if we don’t feel good, can do Nike or Adidas’s latest training app. We’re not going to be running 5k. So it can discourage a lot of people from doing something. And one of my favorite phrases, and we put this in the program, is don’t let perfection get in the way of progress. It’s so important that you can do little bits rather than do nothing because you can’t do everything you want to do. So don’t let perfection get in the way of progress. So module five, so module four is exercise movement. Module five is about sleep. Sleep. So, so important. We take it for granted, right? I sleep. Okay. But if you were to, and we analyze how well you sleep in module five, and we can basically tell you through our program, is that an optimal sleep pattern? Are you getting the right amount and are you getting the right quality of sleep? Sleep is where the body gets to restore. So if you go to bed optimally, meaning you haven’t eaten a meal in the last two hours, you haven’t drunk water for the last, or you haven’t had a drink in the last four hours, then you’re going to give the body a better opportunity to get through the digestive process that it needs to do, and then build on restoring and repairing the parts of the body that have been damaged. One of the most common reasons we wake up, particularly men, is we go to the toilet. And quite often is because we’re drinking, you know, coffee, wine, beer, water before we go to bed. So, you know, just little things like don’t don’t don’t drink anything four hours before sleep. And you will find that you will not have to wake up to go to the toilet. If you are waking up, it’s probably because it’s a habit, because you probably won’t actually need to go to the bathroom if you stop drinking four hours before you go to bed.

Luke Watts
So then that you do that for a week or two, and then you’ll find you will not wake up to go to the bathroom. So so we talk about that, that’s sleep. Module six is we talk about is about gut health and digestion and elimination. So what we are not doing, we’re not going too much into the microbiome, because it’s a relatively new field of study that the isn’t enough evidence yet, that’s kind of mainstream accepted. And it can be a bit of an analysis in Wonderland rabbit hole is quite detailed. So what we’re doing here is educating and advising people on the best way to optimize your gut for digestion, or nutrition absorption, and for elimination. You know, most people in the UK are go to the toilet to pass a solid every two days right now. They go to the toilet two days, yeah, where we know you should be between two and three times a day. So there’s little things again, where we’re trying to, there’s in the module, you get to assess where you are at. And then we can talk about what you might be able to do to improve that function. The final module, which I say final in inverted commas, because you know, there’s no graduation from this course, this is the end of the beginning, when you finish module seven. But module seven talks about how to protect yourself from external chemicals, chemicals in our food, chemicals in our water, chemicals in our air, chemicals in our household products. The module when I go through it can seem quite scary because everywhere you look there’s this chemical.

Robin Daly
Well, it’s true, unfortunately, isn’t it?

Luke Watts
But what I do like about our module is that we are presenting you with the facts, that this stuff is there, but then we’re giving you very, very practical ways to either protect yourself or to do a healthy swap. You can make your own toothpaste. It is so easy with bicarbonate of soda. I do. But there’s so many things that you can make, I mean, let’s say, for example, yeah, you can make your own detergents. You know, there’s so many things that you can do yourself to, again, take some personal responsibility and have fun. It’s so much fun actually kind of saying, oh, yeah, I made my own toothpaste.

Robin Daly
Yeah, I agree. I love it.

Luke Watts
Yeah, I’ve made my own shower gel, you know, there’s so much and then again, that’s all contained in the program in module seven, lots of questions for you to try. So that’s our seven, there are seven modules.

Robin Daly
Fantastic, very comprehensive. Thanks, that was a great overview. So look, we’ve not got so much time left but I wanted to talk as I said at the beginning about the stuff to do with connecting with others, community, groups, all that kind of stuff. Can you say a bit more about what’s on offer there?

Luke Watts
Absolutely. Just to give you a bit of background, support groups have been shown to be very, very, very effective when it comes to providing emotional support and empathy, but also holding each other accountable to change, holding ourselves accountable to doing something. And there’s a reason why things like Weight Watchers, AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, why they work is that it consistently brings together people who have the same end goal. So Weight Watchers lose weight, AA, sobriety from drinking, NA, sobriety from narcotics and drugs. So we wanted to create a group where you always have, you’ve got this overriding ambition to basically live this lifestyle of eating better, exercising more, sleeping well, taking responsibility for your own health. So our community part of our program is to embrace that and bring people into a very safe space of like-minded individuals who all want to achieve the same thing. And within that, they can share where they are in the program, they can share what they’ve been successful in. The program itself, the technology, is a very easy to use interface. The community looks very similar to a lot of social media platforms like Facebook. So you’ll identify the picture icon, or I can upload a picture, I can take a photograph, I can comment on other people’s, I can share, I can like what people have said. A lot of those features are very commonplace in most, and we have the same features. And the idea ultimately is that by bringing that community together, as I said, with supporting people, we’re making them, you know, share their experiences, good and bad. The community, the actually like the rooms, the community rooms are moderated by a professional health coach. So, you know, there are policies and rules, you know, what you can and what you can’t say. But there’s also somebody there that’s just going to be keeping an eye on it, where they might be able to add some real valuable input to the conversation from a health coach’s perspective. So the community part, we think is going to be a real game changer, when it comes to somebody attempting to implement this new way of life, because it is a new way of life. It is very much where Robin is counter-cultural.

Robin Daly
very cultural at this point, it is.

Luke Watts
We want people to find others who are going and to embrace it and to kind of this is the way This is my new way of life now and I’m gonna be meeting and you know sharing my experiences with others. So yeah

Robin Daly
Okay, great stuff. So I mentioned that I’ve done module one and module one is actually free and accessible to all, correct?

Luke Watts
Absolutely, yes. So we want people to go to our website. So the cancer coach.org. So www.thecancercoach.org. And from there, they can see the tree of life. And they can sign up for your free membership. Free membership gives you access to the community. So we hope that people will be able to implement some of the stress management techniques, which all of us could deal with, regardless if we have a cancer history. You know, we could all do with having better coping mechanisms, you know, for example, for example, for example, for example, for example, for example, for example, for example, for example, for example, for example, for example, for example, for example, for example, for example, for example, for example, for example, for example, for example, for example, for for stress, you also get access to your journal. So journal writing is a wonderful, wonderful tool. So that’s all free as when you subscribe, and you’ll have that. So even if you do not pay for modules two to seven, you will still have access to all of that indefinitely. You will also be able to download your workbook, a module one. So again, you’ll be able to fill out your workbook in terms of the module one, and you’ll be able to see what we’re covering in modules two, three, four, five, six, and seven. And again, you know, maybe by looking at the workbook, you might be in Center Biosco. Oh, great. I’d like to give module two a go. Opening up the other modules is just it’s a monthly subscription. So, you know, if you’d like module one, you think this is something that you want to work with, you can just sign up, and you’ll open module two the way you don’t.

Robin Daly
right very good and so couple of questions from that well you you mentioned events what are you talking about here what’s on offer

Luke Watts
Fantastic. So the first series of events we’re going to do is a group is a group education. So in module one, if you were to go through module one as an online course, you would go through nine separate videos. And after each video, there’s a little knowledge check where you can kind of fill out a little questionnaire what what you what you remember in the video. So what we’ve done, we’ve taken those nine videos and we’ve created five standalone workshops for those who don’t want to do it in that way, or for those who want to enforce those learning. So we’re going to make all those five events live and also recorded, and you’ll be able to go through basically all of module one’s content by attending five separate instructor led workshops and events. So that’s the first series of events that we’re going to do. And then we’ll see where we go. We’ve been, we’ve been so blessed by the people who have provided content for our knowledge base and for our toolkit, and they want to talk about their, their subject matter. So yeah, we will be hosting, you know, lots of events from lots of, you know, very well respected. And I’ll tell you, again, Dr. Penny is going to be hosting events on there as well from a right to your oncology oncologist perspective. So yeah, very exciting, very useful. Yeah.

Robin Daly
great stuff so also okay so you pay by subscription for the rest of the modules yes can you give an idea I know it hasn’t launched yet this service but can you give an idea what kind of thing we’re talking about because of course this is critical to some people

Luke Watts
Yes, absolutely. So I think we’re going to be coming in at $19.95. It’s an international program. Okay, so that’s about 15, 16 pounds, I think. Yeah, so about 15, 16 pounds per month, or it’s going to be $200 for the year, which is like 160 pounds or something for the year. So, yeah, so as I said, you know, it’s not a case of getting through the program as quickly as you can, because what you will learn, as I’ve done the program myself, is you, once you’re going through the modules, and once you finish module seven, you will then gravitate back to some of those previous modules. And you’ll start to apply your new way of thinking to what the area of study was in, say, nutrition again, for example, and you can update your workbook, because your workbook is digital, so you can update it and apply where you are at now compared to maybe where you were, download another workbook. And so you have workbook on the first time you went through Tree of Life, and then a few months later, you might give it a go, and do module two, do workbook two. But another, I’m sorry, incentive that we’re offering people, Robin, if I may, is at the end of module seven, if you’re a subscriber to our program, we will offer a complementary lifestyle analysis with a coach.

Luke Watts
a session with the health coach and what they will do there is look at what you’ve achieved in your time with Tree of Life and we’ll give you some guidance and support on areas of lifestyle that a health coach can do based on you know everything you might be struggling with or areas that we feel the health coach feels that you might want to put more into in order for you to achieve your goals and ambitions so that’s going to be yes so anybody who’s a subscriber and once they have completed module seven they’ll be invited to set up a complementary one-on-one private session with a health coach and to assess you know where they are in their lifestyle.

Robin Daly
So does this toolkit here represent something that’s likely to be of interest to the mainstream, do you think?

Luke Watts
I certainly hope so Robin and I’ve had several conversations with council members and people that do represent communities and our offices are based at Queen Mary’s University in East London and you know one of the most deprived areas of the country and in some of these deprived areas is where you find your highest degree of health inequality and so we’ve had conversations with community leaders to say our program can be translated we can make our program available to this community we can reduce the gap of health inequality and I just mentioned obviously that community because they are on our doorstep but there are communities up and down the country where if we can we talked about this earlier if we can reduce the burden of proof on the you know on the admissions in the hospital at the A&E stage and we can do and you’re talking not having to move the needle Robin by many percentage points in order to a massive huge difference in terms of how resources are allocated and money is spent no at a government difference so yes I mean yeah I have that ambition I hope you know through probably a critical mass of people doing the program where we’re going to be able to prevent evidence that these populations are getting healthier they are reducing their risks of disease they are reducing the burden on the health care system they are taking more responsibility for their health that yes we we really do hope that yeah somebody high up looks and then goes yeah let’s roll it that’s what we need yeah yeah interesting

Robin Daly
Okay, great. So look, do you want to just quickly tell us about the launch and You’re going to be part of our event on the 17th of June as well. Yes

Luke Watts
so the program will be so as of today the program should be coming out in the next week or two at the very latest so probably the second week of June module one is already available right now to be downloaded and to have access to so go to you know the cancer coach.org go to tree of life and you’ll just see a little button there that allows you to subscribe to our trial account and then the rest of the modules will be coming online imminently by the time of this recording i guess it will be it will be available um yeah i mean you know we just want as many people to use it as possible and even if you only do module one um i still think you’ll you’ll have a great great benefit and saying stay connected keep keep the app alive because you’ll be able to um keep talking to the communities you’ll still have access to the the events you’ll still have your journal you’ll still have your workbook so there’s still plenty on offer even in our free trial part so we’re going to be looking to be offering some um yeah incentives and and other uh opportunity for people to you know to really engage with uh engage with the program uh we’ll make that announcement on on the 17th of June i don’t want to give everything away but yeah it’s very very exciting i’m happy to be part of your your event on the 17th you know thank you again for the invitation to that and and today um yes to life is you know i i seeked you out a couple of years ago it’s probably been one of the only consistent authoritative voices in the uk on integrative cancer care and uh you know kudos to everything you guys do i know some of the plans that you have robin uh uh are going to be extraordinary when they come to fruition and for me you know i yeah we want to support you as you know personally you know i want to and i know as an organization wherever we can we will uh make make our resources available to you and just go back to what you saying earlier um integrative health care is is in my opinion the only way you’re going to be able to to to really help help people and you know at the moment we have a model that’s more disease care and i think only through integrative medicine can we truly call it health care and i think that’s

Robin Daly
You know, one of the things that’s really heartening is it’s a low-cost form of learning and support Which you know costs are such an issue for many people with a cancer diagnosis who want to look at anything that’s outside the box It’s just like the cost comes straight up in their face So this is great to have so much on offer for not a lot of money. So great All right. Thanks.

Robin Daly
Always good to hear about free or low-cost resources for people with cancer as We mentioned Luke will be taking part in our online event building your integrative team on the 17th of June This and its sister event in London in the autumn will be a minor resources for people with cancer at a very low cost So do read about these events and book at yes to life annual conference org Thanks so much for joining me today I look forward to bringing you another guest expert in the world of integrated medicine next week in the next yes to life Show