Changing the Course of Cancer in India with Manickam Mahalingam, PhD, and Pradeep MK Nair, MD

Riordan Clinic [00:00:00]:
Hello and welcome to the Real Health Podcast. Today’s episode might sound a little bit different because I want to tell you about our Cancer Care Reimagined Speaker Series. When we began planning our 25th International Conference on Human Functioning, Dr. Ron Hunninghake sat down and created his dream team of speakers. Now, we reached out to all of them and we were so delighted that they all said yes. These speakers are leaders in integrative oncology, functional medicine, and research who are truly shaping the future of cancer care. Each week leading up to the conference will feature one of these extraordinary experts right here on the Real Health Podcast. They will be sharing insights, innovation and inspiration to help you reimagine what’s possible in cancer care. Now, this series and the upcoming Conference and Gala would not be possible without the generous support of our presenting partner, Empower. Did you know that Empower is the most advanced compounding and 503B outsourcing facility in the nation? They’re licensed to serve in all 50 states. And and they are deeply committed to improving access to safe, affordable and personalized medication for the patients, providers and caregivers who rely on them. Their belief is simple but powerful. Behind every order is a person in need. And with that knowledge, they approach everything they do with compassion, innovation and a drive for excellence. We are so grateful for their partnership and their support of this important conversation around Reimagining Cancer Care. Now, if you’re looking for tickets, they are on sale now and you can and you can go to our website cancercarereimagined.org. You can also find tickets for our 50th anniversary gala cancercarereimagined.org/gala. Now, these links will be posted in the show notes below. We hope that you will join us here in Wichita this November for both unforgettable events.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:01:44]:
Well, hello everyone. Welcome again to another episode of the Riordan Clinic Real Health Podcast. I’m Dr. Ron Hunninghake and today I have two very special guests and I want to introduce them first by telling you an experience I had in 2018 where I flew into Coimbatore, India and I was joined by Manickam Mahalingam, who is the inventor of Mirakle, which is a vitamin C liposomal vitamin c drink. But Dr. Mahalingam, he’s a PhD doctor, wanted me to come to talk about how vitamin C impacts cancer because he was interested in developing a clinic. As a matter of fact, the clinic was opened on the day that I arrived, the Mirakle Integration Health Center. The goal of it was to change the direction of of cancer in India, but now we’re talking about changing the direction of cancer in the world. So, Manickam, I’m so pleased that you’re here on the. The presentation today. And you’ve got our. Our doctor guest, Dr. Pradeep. Dr. Pradeep, welcome to the program and we want to hear more from you. But Manickam, can you tell us about this amazing journey to change the course of cancer with vitamin C?

Manickam Mahalingam [00:03:21]:
Yes. Dr. Ron, in fact, you were part of the inauguration thing. In fact, we held the inauguration while you were there. And we started our protocol with the Riordan Protocol. In fact, we wanted to start with the Riordan Protocol. So I think our first protocol we launched was vitamin C infusion with the Riordan Protocal. And the idea was to start an alternative treatment for cancer looking at vitamin C as an option, and then see how much we can go far. In the last seven years, we’ve seen very good results so far. We get patients who are mostly stage four, and when they walk into us, they have been given between 15 days to three months to live by standard of care. And then we’ve got those patients, about 70% of them are living beyond five years. So we are having very good results. We’re able to get good remission. And we’ve added a lot of other protocols as well. We do ozone, we do oncothermia, we do magnetic therapy, we do hydrogen breathing, we do, you know, hyperbaric ozone. That and also we are doing a lot of other treatments within a far infrared and etc. So with all the combination, we are able to find a good solution. We’re not really sure which one works, but we’re trying to put everything together. So it’s like throwing a bucket full of, you know, weapons at a problem. And we are having very good results in it.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:05:01]:
Yeah, I mean, it’s an integrative approach. I mean, the word integration itself basically professes that you have to combine things in order to get to the many root causes of cancer. We oftentimes would like to think that every disease has one simple single cause, But I think it’s been my experience and most oncologists experience that cancer patients are probably the most complex of all the chronic illnesses. And many different facets, many different terrains enter into how they got it. And if. If those terrains are not dealt with, then it would be. It would be highly unlikely that we would be able to solve it if we. If we don’t actually correct the underlying causes of the illness, which could be multiple causes. So, yeah, I. I think this is, this is where integrative oncology is going. Looking at all these underlying root causes.

Manickam Mahalingam [00:06:04]:
Yeah, I think right now we’ve also integrated chemotherapy. We are using chemotherapy at very low doses, about 10% of the normal dose which is used by an oncologist. So we are truly integrated with allopathy and the other fields of medicine.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:06:22]:
Yeah. So Dr. Pradeep, what’s your role at the Mirakle Integrative Health Center?

Pradeep MK Nair [00:06:30]:
So I presently head as the chief medical officer and head of research and development at Mirakle. So I rather say I’m the liaison officers between different systems of medicine, starting from medical oncology, general medicine, Siddha homeopathy, naturopathy, which are the traditional indigenous systems of medicine. So when we look in general how integrative medicine though it is glorified in largest way. But people just mix everything into a form of a cocktail and just attack at people. But in Mirakle, what we basically does is like we truly integrate rather than just putting like. Because from normal water to better sleep, everything is anti carcinogenic. So. But it is not that easy a cakewalk when we look into cancer patients. Because every time what we learn either in a conventional oncology or integrative oncology, but every patient gives a different type of challenge for us. And so that single systems cannot answer for the challenges which we are up there even for the similar type of cancers. They respond differently for different kind of therapies. So what we have found in Mirakle is a great patient centric approach and curating a personal personalized protocols in terms of precision medicine. And we don’t treat the scans because that is one part of tumor. And we don’t treat the person because there is another way they look into it. And we don’t treat cancer in the way conventional medicine looks at it. Like if you remove cancer by either surgery, chemotherapy or radiation, the job is done. But you know, until unless you remove the root and the roots are different for different people. For somebody it is as simple like a B12 deficiencies and somebody it is a vitamin D deficiency somebody, everything is normal. It is a mental insufficiency. So we try and find what is that personal individual factor in each person and try and bring and integrate the best form of medicine together by the help of the different experts in our clinic.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:08:34]:
And your patients come and visit the clinic every day. And so it’s an outpatient clinic. And from what we were just talking about is that you’re getting 70% cures in stage four patients using an outpatient clinic.

Pradeep MK Nair [00:08:51]:
But.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:08:51]:
But individualizing the care to each patient is that kind of a comprehensive?

Pradeep MK Nair [00:08:56]:
No, no, actually we have both inpatient and outpatient settings.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:09:00]:
And inpatient as well.

Pradeep MK Nair [00:09:01]:
Okay, so we have a 25 bedded inpatient hospital at this point of time and we have outpatient center also, because typically a patient stay with us for a month where you learn about how to approach tumor mentally and then what are the kind of dietary curation he need to do and what are the kind of nutritional support he would be requiring externally and alongside, we also design a low dose chemotherapy, immunotherapy, target therapy protocols for him, either oral supplementation or through intravenous approach, we’ll be providing them. And then after 24 days, we kind of keep them as an outpatient. So on a typical day, we have around 25 to 28 inpatient and another 20 outpatients who are coming, who are in different phases of their care.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:09:50]:
Yes, and, and manicom. You know, one of the things that strikes me about the approach is the confidence that you have that you’re going to get really good cures. And is that something that you thought from the beginning or has this been amazing to you that by putting all this together as a comprehensive approach, you are getting this level of success?

Manickam Mahalingam [00:10:18]:
I would say, I think from the day one, we were fairly confident because remember, doctor, when you came in, we had the Mirakle drink. At that time, I had treated some patients in 2012 and 2017, 18, just with Mirakle drink, liposomal, vitamin C drink. And these were patients who were stage four and we were able to get good remission out of them. Okay. So then we built the whole treatment around the drink one, and then we added adjunct therapies. I mean, we went with IV vitamin C, we went with ozone, we went with hydrogen, we went with, you know, oncothermia. A lot of other things are added on. So our target, or you know, what we’ve been saying, is that cancer is a mitochondrial disease rather than a genetic disease. So we’ve been following that. It’s a mitochondrial disease and we’ve been attacking the mitochondrial disorders. So that gave us a confidence. So we were fairly clear that we’re going to find a cure. And now we are a lot more confident. With seven years under the belt and with a lot of patients who come out and doing well.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:11:28]:
A lot of people are beginning to use ivermectin and other anti, fungal, anti parasitic medicines. And I was wondering if that was an another part of what you’re doing there now.

Pradeep MK Nair [00:11:42]:
Yes, yes. So we have a typical deworming Protocol to start with, starting with ivermectin followed by praziquantel and then we go for albendazole, mebendazole combination and we will also go for some antifungals. And this is a 14 days protocol which we basically do on a typical cancer patient. And following that we have a typical ivermectin protocols which we use 12.5 milligrams two times a day for 15 days, then give off for 15 days. And also 125 milligram of Fenbendazole has been also used especially in case of like biliary system tumors like cholangiocarcinomas or pancreatic tumors. We use this typically because so we have different perspectives for cancers. One is as I told that it is a mitochondrial dysfunction or a metabolic dysfunction. The second one is cancer as a fungal disease or a cancer as a parasitic manifestation. And the third popular belief is cancer is a modern day scurvy. So when you kind of attack from all these front and also tissue hypoxia and other stuff. So when we attack from all this basic root cause of cancer, we try and to get that. And of course the parasite is the first line of attack, which we do when we start a protocol.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:13:04]:
I’m a bit dumbfounded in the way that this, in some ways this is I guess where everything is moving towards that, you know. But you’ve been able to put it together in a single clinical place because oftentimes with cancer patients they go here and they go there and they’re, they are, they’re kind of, it’s kind of a disjointed type of experience for them. But, but within a one month period you’re able to take stage four cancer and begin to turn it around also. Do you think the, the attitude of the clinic that the factor that you, you, you’ve had the success and when people come in, I know a lot of people that have stage four, they’re so doom and gloom, they feel like they’re dead already because no one’s, you know, unless it’s very devastating approaches that are almost worse than disease. How, how has that evolved at your clinic?

Pradeep MK Nair [00:14:04]:
So primarily what matters is the confidence of the physician. You know, as a medical student we have been almost educated that cancer is an untouchable disease, especially when it comes from a traditional system. Practitioners like me, unlike conventional oncologists. So we have been taught that you are not supposed to touch cancer because cancer is supposed to die. And then we have that belief over a period of time and Then the game changer is we believing that cancer can be cured. Because the way cancer is looked at is like cancer is looked at superficially like diabetes. You just treat the sugar levels and expect diabetes to go. It won’t go because you need to get into the roots to reverse diabetes. In similar way, when you try and remove the growth which is superficial to an organ around the surface of the organ, but the root is somewhere different like. And it is not a single causating agent. It’s multifactorial. There’s a web of causation. And as a trained yoga naturopathy physician, we have this holistic view of looking into a disease of skin is not just a disease of skin, it is a disease of the intestine, it is a disease of the lungs, it is a disease of the kidneys and liver. So in cancer we put in a similar approach. And then we also have an idea running in medical clinic. You know, we as a human being is a biochemical entity. So to create a biochemical entity as a cell, it if in order to repair a cell we don’t require medication. Medication can just suppress or stabilize the area. But if you put in the right kind of nutrients in place, which is deficient, which is leading to metabolic dysfunction, can reverse the tumors to a greater extent. And that knowledge and then demystifying the fear around tumor like the moment you get a diagnosis, you actually trigger the inflammation by a flight or fight response because you’re scared. And alongside, if you do anything, even if you give elixir to the patient, you won’t recover because you’re already scared that you’re very sure that you’re going to die. And your oncologist over and above and all the things you google and whatever you look about cancer, it doesn’t say that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, but that is what we reverse. I feel the belief in each of my consultants over here that they can turn this around and if we can convert the same belief to the patient, I think definitely 70 percentage is a real chance.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:16:22]:
I couldn’t agree with you more. And you you that one of the other features of your clinic is that you use some pretty high class technology. You’re cutting edge is probably the right word. Cutting edge technology. Could you tell us a little bit more about the technologies that you’re using?

Manickam Mahalingam [00:16:44]:
Yes doctor, I think we are trying to find the best of technology available right now. The top of the line that we have is a machine called oncothermia. It’s a machine from Hungary. It’s modulated electrical impulses. Basically it just heats up the tumor, just the tumor alone. Unlike radiation, where you need to target the tumor, in this particular treatment, you actually radiate the entire zone. The electrical, modified electrical impulse are sent into the whole zone, but it reacts only within the tumor. The modulation is done in such a way, the frequency is modulated in such a way that only the tumor cells react and they actually heat up to 104 to 106 degrees, at which time the defense mechanism falls away and the NK cells can get in and kill them. So that’s something which we find doing very well. It’s 14 sittings at a time. And then we do it for about 24 to 25 days. And then we go ahead and give a break. And then if necessary, we do a second treatment, second cycle of treatments. So we find that’s working very well along with our vitamin C, ozone and everything else. And we’re also now looking at incorporating HIFU (high-intensity focused ultrasound). Possibly in the next few months we’ll have that also. So we’re looking at all kinds of possible technology which is available and which can be used in conjunction with other treatments. And also to go back to the previous point that you had asked Pradeep about, you know, talking about the gloom and doom of the patients. You come into our clinic, you’ll never see a patient who’s dull. Everybody’s smiling, everybody’s talking. So it takes about four or five days for us to get the confidence into the patient. And let’s say I’m admitting about eight patients in a week or 10 patients in a week. But there are 40 other patients who are positive. So the other patients are coming and get infected with the enthusiasm.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:18:54]:
Infection.

Manickam Mahalingam [00:18:56]:
Yeah, it’s a good infection. And in fact, you see them positive. And we’ve got, in fact, we have one patient whose husband wrote a poem and sang a song about how we cured his wife. So it’s. And there’s another patient who came, who was a singer, who lost her voice. And within, after our treatment, she gave a concert for 45 minutes to have a big song and then she went out. So it’s quite positive.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:19:25]:
And are you in the process of opening more centers like this? I think you mentioned to me you are building a new hospital.

Manickam Mahalingam [00:19:34]:
Yes, Dr., right now we’re thinking about having a single large center because we need to train a lot of physicians because what we are doing today is what I and Pradeep believe that we can cure. And we have infected Some other doctors again with it. So we have a team of, a small team of people who are doing it and that’s where we are able to get that going. So we want to get one hospital and then possibly start about branches later.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:20:03]:
Yeah. So doctors are oftentimes the hardest treat, the hardest disease to treat in the sense that we get stuck in ideas like cancer. You know, everyone’s pretty much when they get the diagnosis of cancer, death is on their mind. And what I hear you, what you, what you’re both saying is that life is coming back to patients and they are beginning to feel like they really can heal and, and not just temporarily, but on a more permanent basis. Do you have a going home program for them? Do they have to, do they, do they change their eating habits? Do they. Are there certain training courses that you put them through to learn how to take better care of themselves?

Pradeep MK Nair [00:20:50]:
Yes. Yeah. On a 24 days, what we do basically is like we kind of, you know, train them what to eat, how to eat, we make the cuisines for them and we make that healthy eating is a possibility. And rather than, you know, like just telling medicine or the drugs is something which is going to help you cure, we help them identify what has gone wrong. Over a period of 10 years. Let us say are you sleeping for six hours a day? Are you giving a gap of 12 to 14 hours between the last meal and the first meal in a day? Are you getting enough sunlight? Are you looking into the micronutrients environment inside your body? Have you dewormed any time? Have you felt fatigue any point of time? How many hours in a day you have exercised? What are the portion of fruits you had so much? So when we ask such basic questions which we have forgot, like one thing which lost as a community is the self discipline. And we have a lot of money today and everything is a machine based thing and you don’t have to really move your body and get the inflammation out of your body. So when we make life very simple and when we counter the cancer metabolically, rather than just finding what are the one gene which is mutated and attack the one gene so that by the time we address that one gene, another will get mutated and it will be in your liver or it will be in your lungs or the bone. So where we comprehensively, qualitatively attack the root cause which is triggering the genetic mutations, that is a metabolic dysfunction or the mitochondrial dysfunction, we can comprehensively attack and switch off the entire stuff. So during this 24 days, the patient get trained well enough to counter the sympathy what they are getting after getting a diagnosis as cancer. They, they can really like a person wearing a face mask or covering his head because the hair is gone. Post chemotherapy done elsewhere. We make them confident to leave without a mask, leave without. They accept their diagnosis. So when somebody being empathetic or sympathetic towards them, they counter back. But I don’t have, I’m just like a diabetic. I am. And I can very well leave it, live with it and eventually reverse it. And the diet program, we make it in such a way it is traditionally oriented, not like a thing like we cannot eat, like you don’t eat water, you don’t drink water, you don’t drink white rice, you don’t drink bread. It is impossible. So, but we have some certain discipline which we come. And one more thing which we do at our clinic is no, we just don’t give the patient the diet training. We insist the family to change. So we don’t, we don’t want to have two meals cooked in a home. Then it is impossible for the reversal. So eventually we can see a lot of people turning into having pre diagnosis in terms of metabolic profiling because they’re inspired by their patients and the entire home change to having only what the diet the patient is eating. And they acknowledge the healthier habit. And that is what the biggest change we find.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:23:41]:
Yeah, I, I come from a discipline of family medicine and, and I’ve often thought about that, you know, how we isolate the patient sometimes by putting them on too specialized of a diet and they’re eating something that they may not really like and the rest of the family’s back eating all the junk food and there’s a huge conflict there just from the very beginning. But, but what strikes me as you’re describing this is that this is terrain medicine in, in practice, you’re, you’re basically looking at all the different terrains of the body. And if you’re going to heal cancer, you really have to heal all those different terrains. And, and much of it is lifestyle that they have to learn and value and be willing to, to take. But I guess when your life is on the line, you’re open to, to learning new things. And so, but it’s so great how you’ve put this together. So, so Metacom. I’m really, I’m, I’m, I’m was sorry to hear that. Because of, of a problem, Dr. Pradeep cannot come to actually speak. But I’m hoping, Dr. Pradeep, that for our conference you would Prepare. Take these, the lessons that you’ve presented here, and put them into a 20 or 25 minute video so that we can convey this to our conference members. Because I think this will be something that really shows that integrative medicine, if you can implement it big, it’ll work. I think integrative medicine has been cut up into small pieces, but if you put all the pieces together and get a truly holistic shift in the cancer patient and their family and their worldview that their ability to heal, I can heal this could have tremendous implications for how cancer is approached around the world. This is fantastic. Any last thoughts that either one of you would like to have about what you’re doing and how it’s, how it’s affected your vision of modern medicine?

Pradeep MK Nair [00:25:52]:
Dr.

Manickam Mahalingam [00:25:52]:
I think we’ve got a very good experience with what we have done. And what is very gratifying is the patients who are going out. I mean, it’s not that we are curing 100% of the people who are coming in, but then the people that we are curing are people who are absolutely ecstatic. And we started with something like 10 patients a day. Right now we are getting overwhelmed with more than 50 patients a day and we have not talked to anybody. It’s all word of mouth. The patient who got cured, they are bringing in new patients. And, you know, and one patient comes in and suddenly we find five people in his family. For everything else, starting from, you know, allergies or psoriasis, blah, blah, and all that, everything else, they come in. So we find a lot of gratifying feeling because we are expanding into the community. We are getting people coming in right now. We have people coming in from Lebanon, we have people coming in from uk, we have people coming in from Malaysia and also Canada to get treated purely by word of mouth. So it’s quite interesting.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:27:00]:
Yeah. No, I think, like I say, it represents a big shift in something that I’ve always dreamed of possible. And we’ve attempted to do that here at the Riordan Clinic, but we’ve only been able to do it in a bit of a fragmented way. I think the fact that you can put this all together and demonstrate to the patient within four weeks how much dramatically they can improve, this is the direction we need to go in. I’m proud to be a friend of yours and to be associated with what, with the work you’re doing. And I’m very excited that you’re going to come and present at our conference. And so thank you both very much for the outstanding work and may God bless you.

Pradeep MK Nair [00:27:52]:
Thank you, thank you Dr.

Riordan Clinic [00:27:55]:
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