You may not have heard the name Otto Warburg but he is a Nobel prize winning physiologist who was before his time. He started talking about how the cancer cell was different from normal cells and that it had a receptor for sugar and glucose. This was 1931.
Dr. Martin teaches on Otto Warburg’s theory of cancer in today’s episode. His theory was that cancer cells, unlike any other cell, had a generating plant and they would take glucose and ferment it into lactic acid. These cells were super hungry and would divide if you fed them. This is where Dr. Martin’s saying, “don’t feed the bears” comes from.
Warburg’s theory was largely ignored but has come full-circle in recent years as scientists are seeing that cancer is in fact a metabolic disease.
Don’t miss this important episode!
TRANSCRIPT OF TODAY'S EPISODE
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Dr. Martin: Well, good morning everyone. And once again, welcome to another Live Facebook this morning, soon-to-be podcast. Okay. Let me introduce you to a name that you might have heard, but we're going to go over some stuff. His name is Otto O-T-T-O Warburg. So I don't know if you've ever heard of that name or not, but I certainly did in the past, and his name was sort of buried for a long time. Let me give you a little bit of background. Otto Warburg was actually a war hero in World War I and was a scientist. As a matter of fact, he won the Nobel Prize and was considered by his peers to be the top physiologist, and some say of all time. I mean, this guy was a smart guy. And the reason I'm bringing this up is because there's a new book out. It's called Ravenous. And it's the story of Otto Warburg. And I was fascinated by the book. I knew a fair amount of stuff about him, but this book, of course, went into deep detail on his life and how even in Nazi Germany, even though he was a Jew, he survived because he was so smart that the Nazis sort of put up with him.
It's an interesting book nonetheless, but I don't want to talk to you about that book so much as Otto Warburg's theory, and especially his theory of cancer. Okay? So that's what I want to talk to you about this morning. And if you've read our new book, The Metabolic Reset, I talk about the elephant in the room when it comes to the four leading killers in our society, okay? Heart disease and cancer, they're very close in terms of the amount of deaths. And then there's Alzheimer's, which is surprising, and fourthly, diabetes. But what I'm saying in the book is as far as cancer goes, that there's a huge connection to food. Now, let me give you his theory. Okay? Remember, this is 1931 when he started talking about the cancer cell, how it was different from normal cells. And he won the Nobel Prize. He was the top guy, the top doggie in terms of physiology. And he said that the cancer cell was different than any other cell, and that cancer cells had a receptor for sugar, glucose, both. This in 1931.
And cancer cells were like teenagers. Well, he didn't say that, but I say that. What is it about teenagers? Have you had teenagers? They're always hungry. When I was in teenager, I was always hungry. And I had a mamai, a grandma, that thought I was starving to death all the time because she would make me food even when I wasn't hungry. But I was always hungry. That's what grandmothers are for. Right? Anyway, Otto Warburg had a theory. And he said that cancer cells, unlike any other cell, had a generating plant and they would take that glucose and ferment it into lactic acid. And these cells were super hungry all the time. Super hungry. And they would only divide if you fed them.
Now, I got to give me a little bit of history here, guys. And you can imagine, after World War II, he survived, his theory was sort of put to bed. They started developing a theory on DNA, genetics, the genetic theory of cancer, and that cancer cells divided abnormally because their DNA was damaged. I remember a book. I think it was called The History of Cancer. And in that book, they don't even mention Otto Warburg. They got rid of him because they'd never liked this theory. But you know what's happening now is that scientists... not all of them, but a lot of them... are coming back full-circle to what we call metabolic cancer, that cancer is a metabolic disease. It's not a genetic disease. Primarily, it's a metabolic disease. They come full-circle to now they're talking about don't feed cancer. They're teenagers. They want to be fed. And that they metabolize glucose like nobody's business.
And guys, you know me. I've been saying this. I made the connection in the book. If you don't think glucose has anything to do with cancer, then you have to dismiss the latest technology in detection of cancer, which is the PET scan, which is not for your pets. It's for cancer. P-E-T. It's imaging that needs glucose even to work. You can get in a PET scan, but if you don't drink radioactive glucose, the machine don't work. They're very, very expensive machine. As a matter of fact, a little history here in Sudbury, where we have a huge cancer center here, of the North, and they fought for years to get the Ontario government to give us a PET scan. And they raised money, I mean millions and millions and millions of dollars, so that Sudbury would get a PET scan. Well, we have one. But it doesn't work without sugar. And this is going back to Otto Warburg. He was right in 1931. He was right.
Imagine all these years, all these years, and cancer went in one direction... Let me give you a little bit of background. In World War I, you know what they discovered? Mustard gas. Mustard gas. Deadly. But they found that people, soldiers that had tumors and were exposed to mustard gas, their tumors shrank. And thus the development of chemotherapy. That's exactly how it happened. And today, cancer primarily, although there's little bit of a change... I'll talk to you about that in a second. Cancer primarily, from the 1930s and up, was treated by the pharmaceutical industry with chemotherapy. Mustard gas. That's a fact, guys. Now they've got a little bit more sophisticated, but it's still chemotherapy and it was based on mustard gas, poison that destroyed tumors. Do tumors shrink with mustard gas? 100%. Does that get rid of cancer? I have my own thoughts on that. One thing we know, chemotherapy shrinks tumors. It does.
But it doesn't get to the cause of cancer. It doesn't get to your body's innate ability to defend itself from cancer. And so you see a huge shift in some circles in treating, and there are some new target drugs now that target these ravenous teenager cells, and they cut off their supplies… their blood supply so that they can't get any food. I like that better. Patients or former patients or whatever or people online or whatever who want to talk to me about cancer, they find me very simplistic. "Well, that's too simple, Dr. Martin." I tell you, Otto Warburg had it right. Cancer cells are ravenous. They want to eat. Don't feed the bears.
And I've already talked to you about cancer and fungus or candida, yeast, where yeast is found at every site of every tumor. Not according to me, but according to others. On biopsy, they see candida. I can tell you one thing. Candida fungus, yeast, needs sugar. Sugar. So when I say focus and I tell cancer people, "Focus. Don't feed it. Nada. None. Zero." "But Dr. Martin, I like my fruit." "Yeah, I know, but you got cancer." Am I against fruit? Maybe you could have a few berries. But no. And don't drink juice. You can have a perfect smoothie, but no juices. People like to juice. Don't feed anything. So I'm a big focuser on that. Cancer is a metabolic disease. Now, what could start a cancer cell may not be necessarily sugar, although to me, I think most cancers come out of leaky gut, the invasion of the third army, fungus that spreads through the bloodstream, sets up, and then it gets fed.
So it could be what causes leaky gut. Well, a disruption in the microbiome, your bacteria. You got more bad guys than good guys. Antibiotics, nonsteroidal antiinflammatories, chemicals, 100,000 chemicals at least have been created since World War II. And they can start a process, mostly in the microbiome. And then you get an invasion of an army, candida, and then you start cancer cells. They mutate. But they mutate when you feed them. And so if you do nothing else... Think about it. If you do nothing else, starve them out. My motto is cancer hates steak. Cancer loves sugar. Cancer loves carbs. Don't feed it. My theory is that every one of us, me and you, have cancer in our bodies right now. Your immune system, especially your T cells, which are natural killer cells, they target. You don't think they don't see that bad juvenile delinquent in your body? Your T cells know that.
And your T cells, two things. One, they're put to bed by sugar. A T cell will fall asleep if you feed sugar to it. It goes for a siesta. It's not on guard. Navy SEALs are always on guard, but not if you feed them sugar. And then guys, you know this, and we'll come back to this in a minute. T cells, your Navy SEALs of your white blood cells, need vitamin D to charge them up, to get them going like nothing else. They have a major solar panel for vitamin D. I'm a focuser, guys. I'm not complicated.
Now I rest my case. Okay? Here's what I'm going to do. Those of you listening onto a podcast, I'm showing now five pounds of fat. You see that? See five pounds, how much it is? "Oh, Dr. Martin, I only lost five pounds." Holy Moly. Look at how much you lost. It's a foot long and about six inches wide. That's a stinking lot of fat that you lost. Throw away your scale. You know me. A lot of people like The Reset. All they wanted was weight loss. And ladies, I get it. I'm on your side. But when you lose a pound or two or three or four or five, give everybody around you a high five and they should be high fiving you back. But here's the point. I don't want to get lost on weight, but this is key. And I want to prove to you that Otto Warburg was right. Okay?
Now this is how my mind thinks. So follow with me here. There is at least 13 cancers I can think of that have gone through the roof in terms of numbers in the last 20 years. Ladies, hello. I want to get your attention. Breast cancer. You can wear pink all you want, but let's be honest. We are not winning the war on cancer. We're losing it. If a coach had a losing record like breast cancer does, they get fired. But here we are today in 2021 and they always talk about early detection of cancer. They don't talk about cancer prevention. The only time they ever did, the only time they ever talked about cancer prevention was when they were telling men and women not to smoke. Well, good for them. They were absolutely right.
But breast cancer is out of control. In the 1970s, it was one out of 20 North American women. Today, it's one out of five or six or seven. At the most, seven. One out of seven. And every year, it's getting worse. There's nothing that kills me more than someone suffering from cancer. So when I see a woman, "I beat cancer..." And look it... I'm the happiest puppy in town. "You beat cancer. Good for you." Okay? But the cancer just go to bed and it's coming back. But see this fat here? This is just a fact, guys. This is just a fact, that there are cancers like breast, prostate cancer in men, ovarian cancer, uterine cancer, thyroid cancer, colon cancer. Did I name any others? Did I miss… How could I forget this one?
I remember in the 1970s, okay? I can go back a long way, guys. I remember in the 1970s, this was so rare. I mean, super rare, the two cancers I'm going to talk to you about. Pancreatic. When someone had pancreatic cancer, it was an 80-year-old and a man at 80. Well, you're going to die anyways. No, I'm serious. My textbook said that. And liver cancer. But today, these two cancers are out of control. Now, coming back to fat, how do you make this? I'm shaking this fat. For those who are listening on the podcast, I'm shaking it. How do you make this? How do you make fat? Sugar, not fat. Sugar makes fat. And when you put weight on... Even the cancer societies would agree with this. When you put weight on, you are much more susceptible to the cancers I just mentioned, pancreatic, liver, ladies breast, men prostate.
One of the ones in younger and younger and younger and younger that is a tragedy today, colon cancer. But the common denominator in most... and this is why it's a metabolic disease, guys... the common denominator is fat. You know where they say 88% of the population has metabolic syndrome? Metabolic syndrome, guys. Insulin. It's food. Sugars and crappy carbohydrates. Focus, focus, focus. You can't control everything in life. And I get, "Dr. Martin, you drink from a plastic water bottle." Look, there's plastic in the air. There's plastic in water. There's plastic in the placentas, now we know. There's plastic everywhere. And look. I know. I wish it weren't so. But it's so.
I told you the story of a patient that came in a few years ago. I still laugh about it. And she was all proud of herself. "I'm moving to Costa Rica on a little island and I ain't coming back," and she thought I was going to be happy for her. I'd never met her before. First time in the office. I… well I said, "Sucks to be the rest of us. You're heading off to Costa Rica to live by yourself." Well, first of all, all the tea in China couldn't get me to do that. And leave my grandchildren behind? If I'd of known grandchildren were that much fun, we'd have had them first. My word. "But seriously, I’m going to Costa Rica. There's no chemicals there." You want to bet? It's in the ocean there too.
Otto Warburg. Remember that name. He was a smart dude. If you read the book... it's Ravenous. It's interesting because he was arrogant too. He was an idiot as far as personality. He was full of himself. I didn't know that about him until I read the book. But it was fascinating to see. I mean, the guy was a genius. Imagine in 1931, he knew about sugar, but that wasn't the narrative. So it got buried. They went after DNA and the cancer industry through the big pharmaceutical companies. You know it's interesting that... And I don't want to get sidetracked too much here, but the amount of money that's made from cancer, it's crazy. And guys, like I said, if you got cancer and you decide to get chemotherapy, hey, you're going to have a lot of pressure to go right down that route.
Look, you know what I am? I'm a supporter of people. You make decisions. You make those decisions for your body. I just want to give you information. I want to give you information. Information really is power, isn't it? Then you can make choices. So one thing you can do, guys, change your diet. Is it easy? Nope. Probably the hardest thing you'll ever do in your life. If you're a carboholic, it'll be the hardest thing you ever did in your life.
Just to finish with this, I remember a cancer patient that was given very little time. They came to me many years ago. And I said, "Well, if I was you, here's what I would do." The patient looked at me like, "What? You don't want me to have cereal in the morning with my orange juice and my toast and my jam?" I mean, right out of the gate, you're feeding cancer, big time, at the start of your day. I said, "You'd be better off not to eat, but I'm going to try and get you to switch over to bacon and eggs and no toast." "I can't do that." I said, "Well, I can't help you then." "I thought you were going to give me a magic potion, magic pills, Doc." No. I was supportive. I felt sorry for her. I wanted to hug her. But I said, "Look, I'm not God. I can't do a miracle for you. But I'll pray for you." Okay. Anyways guys, that's the story of Otto Warburg. I hope you found that interesting. I love history by the way. I love history-history and I love nutritional history and medical history. I love that stuff. Okay. I don't know if it's my age and I like to go back, but I've always been like that.
Okay. We love you guys. Friday is Question and Answer. Very popular. We appreciate that. If you don't have a copy of The Metabolic Reset, you need to get it. Plus you need to buy one for your friends. And if they read, it's an easy read. I think you guys would agree with that. I'm not a complicated person. I can't. I don't learn like that and I can't teach like that. I'm not complicated. If you're not part of the Martin Clinic Facebook group, please join. And some people can't get on Live. They're working or whatever. Remind them of this is a podcast. It'll turn into a podcast. Tell them to sign up on their smartphone or whatever they use for The Doctor Is In Podcast and share that knowledge, guys. Okay. Love you guys. Talk to you soon.
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