In this episode of the Real Health Podcast, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD, talks to Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO about the potential underlying fungal link to cancer.
Thanks to This Episode’s Sponsor
Riordan Clinic Nutrient Store: https://store.riordanclinic.org/
Links
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO : https://hyattlifesciences.com/
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD: https://riordanclinic.org/staff/ron-hunninghake-md/
Learn more about Riordan Clinic: https://riordanclinic.org/
Interested in becoming a Patient: https://riordanclinic.org/request-an-appointment/
Disclaimer: The information contained on the Real Health Podcast and the resources mentioned are for educational purposes only. They’re not intended as and shall not be understood or construed as medical or health advice. The information contained on this podcast is not a substitute for medical or health advice from a professional who is aware of the facts and circumstances of your individual situation. Information provided by hosts and guests on the Real Health Podcast or the use of any products or services mentioned does not create a practitioner-patient relationship between you and any persons affiliated with this podcast.
Read the Transcript
00:00:02:21 – 00:00:16:21
Narrator
This is the Real Health podcast brought to you by Riordan Clinic. Our mission is to bring you the latest information and top experts in functional and integrative medicine to help you make informed decisions on your path to real health.
00:00:16:23 – 00:00:37:14
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
Well welcome everyone. I’m Doctor Ron Hunninghake here at the Riordan Clinic, and we’re having another episode of the Real Health podcast. And it’s my great pleasure to have Doctor Kirsten West on today, who’s one of our finest naturopathic oncologists. We have three now. And you were the first of the three, weren’t you, Kirsten?
00:00:37:15 – 00:00:39:16
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
What? Here’s to the three musketeers.
00:00:39:17 – 00:00:44:01
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
The three musketeers? Yes. All for one and one for all.
00:00:44:03 – 00:00:44:23
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
Yep.
00:00:45:00 – 00:01:10:08
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
So, you and I have been having an interesting conversation lately, since I got back from Japan, where I talked about, the fungal link to cancer, and. But even before that, we were noticing that, patients were coming back on their, on their tox toxicology type test with high mycotoxins levels, which. When did you start seeing that?
00:01:10:08 – 00:01:12:05
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
Was that just recently or.
00:01:12:07 – 00:01:27:01
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
No, I I’ve been seeing it, you know, really as we have been talking about this and I put the pieces together, you know, it was something to reflect upon that man. I see it probably in about 85% of my patients. And I’ve seen it from the very beginning.
00:01:27:03 – 00:01:50:01
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
So, yeah. And we’ve been all about, the Reardon clinic and the Reardon approach is all about looking for root causes. And, and because we approach from a terrain perspective, we’re looking at a number of underlying factors, like when you think terrain therapy, what is therapy. What are some of the things that you look for in terrain therapy theory?
00:01:50:03 – 00:02:05:07
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
Oh gosh. You know, you think about the terrain, tan, inflammation, metabolic issues, toxins, endocrine function, stress, trauma, all of those things.
00:02:05:09 – 00:02:06:11
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
All these things. Yeah.
00:02:06:11 – 00:02:06:23
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
Oh, yeah.
00:02:07:00 – 00:02:31:17
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
So these are, these are underlying factors, but we don’t think of them quite as root causes. They are they are contributing causes. But we don’t know if these represent true root causes. But what we’re talking about in this podcast is that maybe there is a root cause to cancer. Would that kind of get you excited?
00:02:31:19 – 00:02:46:13
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. You know, we’re always like all of these various ideas or hypotheses about this causing this or that, causing that. And if we could have one thing that could really help us to pinpoint, boy, this could be the driver, wouldn’t that be nice?
00:02:46:13 – 00:03:22:21
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
And if that one thing was treatable with a safe way, inexpensive, maybe some definite changes in lifestyle, which we’re going to ask our cancer patients to make anyway. But, this. So this is where we got really excited about mycotoxins. And mycotoxins are manifestations of mold illness, but mold is actually a subset of fungal infections. So fungal infections most people think of in terms of like athlete’s foot or seborrheic dermatitis or something like that, which is superficial.
00:03:22:23 – 00:03:47:22
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
But I think if, if, if we talked to an infectious disease specialist, he said he would say some of the worst infections that people can get are systemic fungal infections. Yeah. But what if cancer was a systemic fungal infection but not, you know, no no fever, no pain or anything. It just kind of creeps in and starts to take over.
00:03:47:24 – 00:04:05:22
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
Yeah. You know, there there’s an MD, I need to look back at his name, but he talked about the fact that there was a man with a gastrointestinal tumor. They thought it was a gap. They thought it was cancerous when it was actually just a large mass of a fungal infection in his GI tract. And it was an overgrowth.
00:04:05:24 – 00:04:20:08
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
So you think about that. So and we also we also know that tumors themselves are for so long we thought of them as being sterile. But there’s new information coming out showing that they actually have a unique microbiome of their own.
00:04:20:09 – 00:04:47:20
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
Yeah. That’s when I was giving my talk in Japan. I really felt like that was the the crowning evidence that we really do need to start thinking about the, the fungal link to cancer because, this doctor, he, he, he identified it in 33, 33 different types of cancers in over 77,000 different slides that he tested. He was looking for fungal DNA.
00:04:47:20 – 00:05:15:14
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
And he found it. Yeah. So that is the scene of the crime. And you’ve got the evidence now. And but I think it’s going to be hard for most people to accept because, you know, we we look at the modern approach to, to cancer. It’s very, very complicated and, very expensive and, a lot of, a lot of potential side effects.
00:05:15:16 – 00:05:23:02
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
What what do you see happening as a result of beginning to look at cancer from this perspective?
00:05:23:04 – 00:05:42:09
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
Well, I think that so much of our current therapies are working to manage the side effects of cancer. If we’re really not getting to the cause of cancer, we’re basically just, you know, dealing with the side effects of this disease or if we can figure out, hey, you know what that smoking gun is, that’s going to give us leaps and bounds as far as treatment.
00:05:42:12 – 00:06:04:23
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
It’s going to take us leaps and bounds as far as treatment is concerned, and helping us to really eradicate hopefully this disease and get people into remission. So and and sustained remission. I mean, there was the story we there is the case study of the man who had advanced pancreatic cancer and because he was so immuno compromised during treatment, ended up getting a histo plasmamosis infection.
00:06:05:00 – 00:06:25:20
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
And who knows what other, you know, fungal or mold infections he may have had before that initiated the cancer, but was treated with nine months of itraconazole, he became a surgical candidate and has ever since been disease free. So you know, you just think about this and you go, well, what if this really is something that we need to be paying more attention to?
00:06:25:22 – 00:06:49:14
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
Yeah. And and I don’t want the audience to think that, okay, we’re just going to start using fungal antifungal drugs. And that’s going to be the answer B because really the fact that people become more susceptible to fungal infections is actually the alteration of the terrain that we now know sets them up for cancer. So it’s the same, same underlying causes.
00:06:49:20 – 00:07:06:15
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
But now we’re seeing, shall we say, a deepest cause or the root root cause of cancer, that if we attack that along with the other terrain elements, that we are going to have better outcomes, better.
00:07:06:18 – 00:07:24:21
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
We can’t get away from cleaning the soil, right? We have to continue to clear the soil. And because it is those carcinogens that and the things that are, in the metabolic approach, those imbalances that can promote the terrain, that would enable a pathogen to set in. Yeah.
00:07:24:21 – 00:08:05:20
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
So, you know, and this goes way back even before World War Two, when, the Warburg effect was, discovered by Doctor Warburg where he saw that there were, cells that were shifting from their normal utilization of oxygen in the mitochondria. They were shifting back to this more primitive type of metabolism called glycolysis. And what what the actual effect is, is that the you know, we understand that if you’re starving, you know, for oxygen and there’s no oxygen available, your body will shift to this naturally.
00:08:05:22 – 00:08:49:13
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
But in cancer cells, they’re shifting to this, glycolysis, even though there’s plenty of oxygen around. And this, in essence, is what the Warburg effect it’s it’s it’s, aerobic oxygen, glycolysis. That’s what the Warburg effect is. And really, no one has been able to explain that. But but now with this fungal hypothesis or link is we’re beginning to see that the fungi invades the cells very slowly and starts to convert them over to this, this different type of functioning because it’s beneficial to the survival of the fungus, but not to the survival of the cells.
00:08:49:15 – 00:09:19:00
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
Exactly. And I think a large piece of this is that we’ve come from a paradigm of thinking that the cell is malfunctioning, that there’s something wrong with our cells, there’s damaged mitochondria, that that cell, something’s wrong with the processes that are going on. But what if we looked at this as a cell adaptation, as a way to initiate, because we know studies have shown that these cells will actually go into a real glycolysis in an attempt to initially fight a pathogen.
00:09:19:02 – 00:09:34:11
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
And they do that to flood the the cytosol with reactive oxygen species and, you know, help distribute the nutrients from the pathogen. But if that pathogen never gets, you know, eradicated, it could just be a consistent pattern.
00:09:34:14 – 00:09:36:15
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
If the pathogen wins.
00:09:36:17 – 00:09:37:13
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
If the pathogen.
00:09:37:13 – 00:09:41:13
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
Wins because the terrain is weak.
00:09:41:15 – 00:09:42:04
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
Yes.
00:09:42:04 – 00:10:05:05
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
That’s why that’s why, the strategy of the cell doesn’t work. And so what ends up happening is the cellular, biochemistry gets taken over by the fungus, and yet it’s so stealthy. Who would ever think who would ever think that a, you know, athlete’s foot would lead to cancer, which is a that’s that’s not the right way to think of it.
00:10:05:05 – 00:10:16:24
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
But but in many ways, when you start talking to oncologists about fungi, they say, oh, well, you know, this is cancer. You know, we’re, well, fungus, but fungus are pretty stealthy.
00:10:17:01 – 00:10:41:06
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
Yeah, yeah. I think and you know, I was I wrote down some stats, we have discovered less than 5% of the microorganisms that exist. So it just, I mean, I feel like there’s so much more we can do to really seek out some additional answers. And and maybe, maybe our cells aren’t malfunctioning. Maybe they are attempting to help us.
00:10:41:08 – 00:10:47:22
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
But because of our terrain and and the issues they’re in, they’re able to, to take over.
00:10:47:24 – 00:11:18:19
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
So it definitely does come back to terrain. And, and one of the really interesting thoughts that came about when I really started to look into this is I’ve always wondered, what’s why are colorful fruits and vegetables, especially vegetables, are so important for cancer care? Well, the plants, you know, they’re number one enemy is fungi, mold and fungi. And so they have to develop these very, incredible phytonutrients strategies.
00:11:18:19 – 00:11:44:13
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
These these, these chemicals that I’ve read somewhere that plants are like pharmaceutical, invention plants, you know, they, they, they actually generate they have actually very complicated DNA. And they use that to make all these phytochemicals to protect themselves from the fungi. Well, what is it that prevents cancer? Lots of colorful thanks to balls and fruits and phytonutrients.
00:11:44:13 – 00:11:50:04
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
Herbs that are rich in these, these antifungal compounds.
00:11:50:06 – 00:12:10:17
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
A great example is resveratrol that that grapes make, right? Yes. And we know that resveratrol has got some decent data out there backing it as an anti-cancer, but it also starts to make the question of, well, what if a lot of the reason so many of our treatments were such as some of these herbs is because they are antifungal?
00:12:10:19 – 00:12:53:14
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
Yeah, we’re we’re thinking that it’s an antioxidant and it’s helping against oxidative stress, which it is. But it’s also antifungal. Yeah. And so this is where, where we can see that if we could, use these in parallel with conventional treatment, we’re going to see a lot better outcomes and, and healthier people too, you know, because, and it’s interesting that the people I find and maybe you’ve seen this too, the people who do the best with cancer are the ones that do change their lives in ways that, yeah, improves their immune system and it improves their detoxification system.
00:12:53:16 – 00:13:12:09
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
They improve their sleep. They they work on their relationships, they get more exercise. And these are all things that basically helps a person be healthier. But it also helps you to defeat, a fungus that’s trying to stealthily invade your body.
00:13:12:11 – 00:13:20:20
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
Exactly. And I always, I always tell people, I say, I want you to feel better than you ever felt prior to getting your diagnosis, because that’s what this is all about, right?
00:13:20:22 – 00:14:05:16
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
So most of the people who have, who have been successful at overcoming cancer have made dramatic life shifts and, they’ve made they’ve made changes not only in their diet and in their exercise, but in relationships. They’ve, they’ve, they’ve they’ve cleaned up relationships. They’ve they’ve gotten out of toxic environments. Makes you wonder, since we’re finding more mycotoxins, if, moldy houses, you know, are really pulling the immune system down because, ultimately, ultimately, you know, the thing that’s having the best success right now in conventional medicine is immunotherapy, things that really boost up the immune system.
00:14:05:18 – 00:14:14:08
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
So if we can get rid of, fungi and other factors that are pulling the immune system down, we’re going to be helping our patients even more that.
00:14:14:13 – 00:14:38:10
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
It’s a constant assault, right? If you’re living in a moldy house or a moldy environment, it’s just a constant assault on the immune system. So, you know, we well, I’ve seen a lot of success when we start to really go after those mycotoxins, but sometimes they continue to hang. And that’s when we say, probably a good idea to check your home, check your office to see if you are being exposed.
00:14:38:12 – 00:14:56:11
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
Right. There’s a number of strategies for helping to get the mycotoxins out of your body. But you’re if you’re living in an environment where you’re still being re-exposed every day, you’re you’re basically trying to bail out a boat that’s got holes in it. Yeah, yeah. And that’s not going to work.
00:14:56:13 – 00:15:11:15
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
So yeah. Yeah. And also, you know, looking at some of the foods that you’re eating as well, we know that coffee can carry quite a bit of mold on it. So making sure that the things that you are putting in your body, you know, equally as important as what’s outside of your body. So, yeah.
00:15:11:15 – 00:15:25:23
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
All the people that went off of, bread and all the wheat and everything in the interest of the, you know, the low carbohydrate, ketogenic type diet, maybe they got better because they were getting less moles in, you know?
00:15:25:23 – 00:15:48:17
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
Right. You know, I think about that a lot. We’ve talked about that, you know, the whole carnivore fad that’s been well, it’s not really there is something to it. The carnivore diet, keto diet, things like that. When you’re getting rid of those foods, those are the foods that do tend to carry mold. So what if in some weird way, we’re also maybe not in a weird way, maybe in a way we are also getting to the, you know.
00:15:48:19 – 00:15:49:24
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
Root cause for.
00:15:50:01 – 00:15:50:20
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
The root cause.
00:15:50:20 – 00:16:27:10
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think it’s it’s really it’s in some ways it’s a kind of a simple sort of observation and a thought. You know, when you say, okay, if we can, if we can, if we can beat internal cellular fungus, this is going to have a really good, good outcome. But I think we’re going to it’s going to be a little bit of an uphill battle because we’ve we’ve we’ve made cancers such a horrible, huge monster that we really think that unless we bring in the really the nuclear bomb, so to speak, that there’s no way to beat it.
00:16:27:12 – 00:16:42:22
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
But this is actually a very cost effective, simple lifestyle change for better overall health, as well as helping your immune system to recover and have a more effective outcome against your tumor.
00:16:42:24 – 00:17:05:13
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
That, you know, really promote that microbiome, because it is that microbiome that drives so much of our health. So and we we’ve been doing this we’ve been doing the terrain approach and looking at all of these things. It’s just looking at a changed paradigm. And I really do. I love I love the idea of kind of flipping, flipping the perspective on its head and saying, well, what if our cells aren’t really malfunctioning?
00:17:05:13 – 00:17:06:20
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
What if they are trying to help?
00:17:06:22 – 00:17:31:18
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
Yeah, that’s right. That’s a whole better way to think of cancer than just kind of a horrible old monster that’s just out to get us. That really is our cells doing their best. But they’re not. They’re not able to do it. One thing we didn’t touch on is you know, we did. But repurpose drugs. That whole phenomenon is going on right now that more and more people are looking at repurpose drugs.
00:17:31:20 – 00:17:45:01
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
But a lot of the repurposed drugs themselves are antifungal, and they and they’re not. People don’t realize that, but they are. And so that’s a whole nother dimension of care that can be be provided.
00:17:45:01 – 00:18:00:14
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
So yeah. And aside from even the drugs that we know are antifungal, right. Like mebendazole or itraconazole or things like that. There, there are other off label drugs that do tend to have some antifungal properties that we didn’t realize they did.
00:18:00:16 – 00:18:02:01
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
Tamoxifen.
00:18:02:03 – 00:18:02:20
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
Tamoxifen.
00:18:02:21 – 00:18:09:22
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
That to me was such an astounding thing. Like, you know, women are put on tamoxifen to lower estrogen, right?
00:18:09:24 – 00:18:10:10
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
Yeah.
00:18:10:11 – 00:18:12:00
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
But it’s an antifungal agent.
00:18:12:00 – 00:18:25:05
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
Maybe that’s and same with metformin right. Like you know, and but then you think about metformin two pathogens like to feed off of sugar. So I mean that is working in two ways. You know, it’s working as an antifungal but also working on the glycolysis pathway.
00:18:25:08 – 00:18:47:09
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
So yeah this is this is really good. What I call expanded thinking. You know you’ve got to think outside the box sometimes because cancer is such a horrible box and so many people get themselves stuck in. And if we can get people to open their brains and say, we might be able to, help a lot more people survive longer and better.
00:18:47:09 – 00:19:06:01
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
So thank you for all you’re doing. This is an exciting presentation, and I hope people come away from this with some new ideas about what they can do other, because all of us, you know, when you know that whole thing, stand up for cancer. Everyone stands up. Everyone stands up because everyone knows people who have cancer dealing with cancer.
00:19:06:03 – 00:19:14:11
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
So we’re all in this boat. And so we just need to learn more effective ways of of, surviving and thriving.
00:19:14:13 – 00:19:16:10
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
Yes. It takes a village.
00:19:16:12 – 00:19:16:21
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
Takes a.
00:19:16:21 – 00:19:18:12
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
Village. Village. We’re in it together.
00:19:18:14 – 00:19:21:15
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
Well, thanks for all the work that you do in this field, doctor West.
00:19:21:15 – 00:19:23:13
Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO
So thanks, doctor. On you too.
00:19:23:14 – 00:19:26:20
Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD
All righty. Well, well. Stay tuned.
00:19:26:22 – 00:19:47:04
Narrator
Thank you for listening to the Real Health podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe and leave us a review. You can also find all of the episodes in show notes over at Real Health podcast.org. Also, be sure to visit Riordan Clinic.org, where you will find hundreds of videos and articles to help you create your own version of real health.
