Healing at the Intersection of Science and Humanity with Dr. Lise Alschuler

Riordan Clinic [00:00:01]:
Hello and welcome to the Real Health Podcast. Today 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. We reached out to them and much to our delight, they all said yes. Now our 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, we 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. This series and the upcoming conference would not be possible without the generous support of our presenting sponsor, Empower Pharmacy. Empower Pharmacy is the most advanced compounding pharmacy in the nation, licensed to serve in all 50 states. They are deeply committed to improving access to high-quality, affordable, and personalized medications 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. Tickets are on sale now for the conference at cancercarereimagined.org. We hope you will join us in Wichita this November for this unforgettable event.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:01:26]:
So welcome everyone. I’m Dr. Ron Hunninghake. And I’m pleased to have you back again here at the Riordan Clinic podcast, Real Health Podcast. And it really is my great pleasure to have Dr. Lise Alschuler. Did I get that right, Lise?

Lise Alschuler, ND, FABNO [00:01:42]:
Yeah, you did right. Right on.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:01:44]:
Good German name. Dr. Alschuler has. She’s a naturopathic doctor, but she’s an author. Gosh. She specializes in oncology. And now you’re an educator. You’re the head of what used to be. Didn’t it used to be Southwest University there?

Lise Alschuler, ND, FABNO [00:02:04]:
It used to be Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine, now Sonoran University of Health Sciences.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:02:10]:
Welcome to our program. We are happy to talk with you because you’re going to be one of our featured speakers coming up here in less than a month. Now we are reimagining cancer the care of cancer patients here in Wichita, Kansas. And It’ll be the 25th international conference that’s been sponsored through the Riordan Clinic. Dr. Hugh Riordan had 17 international conferences. He always said that this was how he learned functional medicine. Was through having these conferences and interacting with other doctors. And so we’re pleased to have you on the show and tell us a little bit about yourself and what led you to naturopathic medicine and how has that led into your work in oncology.

Lise Alschuler, ND, FABNO [00:02:55]:
Sure. Yeah. So, well, thank you first of all for having me on the show and also for having me at the conference and looking forward to that. Looking forward to learning myself, of course, as well. I have been a naturopathic doctor for over 30 years, and over half of that time I’ve specialized in what we call naturopathic oncology. So I was originally planning to go to conventional medical school and eventually, perhaps even through a specialization in oncology. But early on, right before I entered into conventional medical school, I discovered naturopathic medicine. And for me, it was really a beautiful way to reflect in my own philosophy and principles of healing, you know, recognizing the value of the wisdom of nature, the innate healing process that lies within each of us, and trying to find the most holistic ways to stimulate that healing process. And that’s something that I’ve strived to do throughout my career. And nowhere is that more appropriate than in people diagnosed with cancer. You know, I think that conventional oncology has a tremendous role in working with people who have a diagnosis of cancer, because tumors by their nature are very aggressive. They don’t play by the rules at all. And so we need big aggressive therapies to kill the tumors for sure. And so for a lot of people, that means utilizing some form of conventional treatment. But meanwhile, that tumor is growing in a person, and there are certain conditions that have facilitated or made the body more permissible to the growth of the tumor. And that’s where naturopathic medicine and integrative oncology really offer a lot. They deal with the sort of terrain of cancer and trying to help to make the body less hospitable to cancer and its regrowth. The other component that I really have enjoyed is finding natural agents and ways to complement or to follow both conventional treatments, because there are many natural agents. Like one of the topics I’m going to be speaking about at the conference are the use of medicinal mushrooms as an example that really augment the ability for conventional treatments to do their job more effectively. So add to tumor destruction, support the immune system’s ability to destroy tumors. So I just think, you know, that it’s a both and approach, and everybody deserves to have both. And that’s really why I’ve been so happy to be a naturopathic doctor for so long. I absolutely love what I do. I love being at Sonoran University where I, although I’m not practicing here, I’m, you know, running the school. It’s very gratifying to be training hundreds of individuals to become naturopathic doctors, to be ambassadors of this kind of healthcare and healing, because it’s so, so important.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:05:58]:
Yes. When our number two daughter graduated from college, she was trying to ask herself, what can I do? And she wasn’t quite ready to go to medical school, but she had heard about Bastyr and she ended up going to Bastyr. And so after she had been there for a few months, dad had to go up and check on her. And I got to sit in on several of the classes. And I was struck with the fact that here was medical school, but intertwined in all of the various trainings and whatnot, the academics here was nutrition being woven into that discussion in a very, very close knit way that really brought out not only what was the pathology, but what were the paths to healing. Not just the problem, but here were innate solutions that could be evoked using natural substances that were much safer. And it was quite a, quite a. Of course I’d been here at the Riordan Clinic, but I remembered back when I went to medical school, during the whole four years we maybe had 90 minutes of nutrition. And so a lot of the patients that come to me frustrated that their doctors don’t seem to care or don’t seem to have much knowledge in it. That’s the problem is they don’t and it’s not been focused on. And so it’s really hard for people who have not had the training to really understand and envision that something as simple as high quality food, high quality nutrients, herbs, fungal mushrooms and whatnot, all of these things can have a role to play in the integrative care of a chronically ill patient, especially a cancer patient. And so I think a lot of people, though, are catching on and the growth of integrative oncology is coming along partly because the rates of cancer unfortunately seem to be going up.

Lise Alschuler, ND, FABNO [00:08:02]:
Right. Yeah. And I think you’re absolutely right, though, that in general, across the adult population, as you well know, it’s estimated that maybe close to half of all adults use some form of, say, even a dietary supplement on a somewhat regular basis. But when you look at the population, any population that you study, whether it’s people getting active treatment for cancer, people in screening programs who are at high risk for cancer, people in trials, people who’ve been diagnosed and are in the recovery mode all across the board. The rate of, the usage, rate of integrative therapies is closer to 90%. So there’s obviously a very high interest which makes sense to me. People are, there’s something unique about a diagnosis of cancer, I think, because the disease itself is life threatening for many people. So it’s a scary illness and the treatments are daunting. You know, the conventional treatments are tough. And so I think the combination of those two things really create a certain desire and openness in people to, to look for something else. What else can I do to beat this disease? Number one, preserve my health and sanity while I’m going through the treatment. Number two, and then prevent its recurrence. I don’t have to go through this again. And I think that’s really where an integrative approach is so perfectly suited.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:09:25]:
And what a lot of people don’t realize, and I think a lot of doctors especially that don’t have a background in nutrition, is that the whole field of nutritional medicine has evolved and that, and I think it was because of naturopaths and what I just had mentioned earlier that the science of health is now being woven into the science of disease and illness. And we’re seeing that the more we know about what helps the body get healthier when it loses the health. That ties into decisions that people are making every day about what types of foods they eat, the quality of foods they eat, the number of colorful foods that they eat, all the various nutrients, vitamins, minerals. And what Riordan brought, was the whole idea that he really discovered is that unless you measure this, you’re just going to try to throw something at the wall and hope that it sticks. Well, that’s, that’s old. That’s old nutrition. Now, I’m not opposed to people, you know, trying supplements and eating healthier foods, but if you have measurements that shows that you’re low in certain areas, that’s going to make a big difference. I’ll oftentimes ask the audience what’s the most important nutrient? And they start, there’s a lot of different nutrients out there when you go into a health food store, but the most important is the one or two or three that you, as a patient or, or co-learners, we call them here, the ones that you’re lowest in. That’s what’s pulling your body down. And unless you have that measurement, you could try this, you could try that. But bringing the science of nutrition into the practice of medicine, that’s going to make the biggest difference.

Lise Alschuler, ND, FABNO [00:11:09]:
Yeah, said so well, and I think it’s true that as a profession, naturopathic medicine has long been invested in infusing the science behind what we do. And I think that, as you and I have seen over the last couple of decades, the way in which we’re understanding this has evolved too. And we’re really on the brink, I think, of truly personalized medicine. We’re not quite there yet, but we’re getting closer as we understand more about genomics, proteinomics, and even metabolomics. Like all the ways in which each person uniquely comes into this world genetically, and then through their experiences, expresses their genes uniquely, metabolizes nutrients uniquely. And the more we can measure all of these things, the more precise we can be in finding things that support one person over another. It’s exciting. I mean, it’s an exciting time to be in this field.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:12:11]:
So, as many of our listeners know, we have three naturopathic oncologists on staff that are doing a fabulous job. One of the things that they’ve taught me is this whole concept of terrains. And I think our listeners, many of them, will have heard of it. But now, when we see a cancer patient, in addition to measuring the nutritional, the nutrient terrain, we’re now looking at toxicology, we’re looking at gastroenterology, the gut, the microbiome. We’re looking at psychological and whole person things. How are you sleeping? What’s your stress level? All of these factors. What are the various heavy metals that might be in your system or the, the environmental chemicals that might. Or mold, mycotoxins. All of these things come into play because when you’re dealing with cancer, you’re, you know, you’re dealing with probably what most people consider, depending upon what stage you’re on, one of the most difficult of all cancers to deal with. But if you don’t know what the terrains are all about, and you don’t correct what’s out of place or causing problems in the terrain area, you can do the best cancer treatment available. And it may not quite do the job because you haven’t really treated the whole person in a very full scientific sense.

Lise Alschuler, ND, FABNO [00:13:29]:
Yeah. And I think one thing I would just add to what you said is that I think it’s true that we do need to really analyze as many of those components as possible. And at the risk of becoming too reductionistic, I think we also need to always lift our heads up and really keep in mind the person. I love that you call your patients co-learners, because I think that’s really beautiful and exactly Right. It’s, you know, it’s how do all those data points make sense for that particular individual? And let’s get curious together and discover what’s unique about this person’s journey and what resonates most with them as a starting point or what’s going to be most impactful from an intuitive perspective. Or, you know, I think that there’s ways that we can take a very scientific approach and make it personalized in a holistic sense as well.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:14:24]:
Yeah. Dr. Michelle Niesley and I are going to lead off the conference and we’re going to be talking about his whole brain medicine and how we’ve been dominated in the last few centuries with left brain medicine, where we get down to the scientific facts of the matter which we were talking about. But it’s actually the left brain really depends a lot upon the right brain, and the right brain is more holistic. It’s taking the big picture and it’s understanding how relationships, how your living environment, your, your post, your maybe PTSD type stuff, how these things may be playing into the whole picture. And there’s not necessarily a blood test for ptsd. There’s not one way that you can measure what’s going on in the home and your relationships. And so there’s that part. And then the other part that we’re going to be talking about is how the corpus callosum is the part of the brain that communicates between the two hemispheres. And there’s evidence that a lot of times that gets shut down. And what we’re trying to do, and I think this is the. The evolution of integrative medicine, is that we’re trying to get both sides of the brain, both sides of. We want very good, detailed left brain science, but we want the whole person, right brain impact to be as much a part of the care of that patient as the science. And that part is the part that’s kind of been missing based upon the types of structures that we have at work here in the modern times. But I think, as we can show, this can actually result in better outcomes and lower costs if people do this from the very beginning, take a more integrative approach. But it’s going to take some work to open up the eyes of our counterparts. But I certainly have been opened up in my 30 years here. I’ve been learning how both sides of the brain need to be fully employed in order to really get the best outcome for our chronically ill patients.

Lise Alschuler, ND, FABNO [00:16:36]:
Yeah, I love that you’re opening up the conference that way. I Think that, you know, I would even underscore that more by saying that I think that humanity is at a very interesting juncture right now. We are in a digitally transformative age, the likes of which we’ve never seen. And the rate of change is so fast. And you know, I think we have a lot at stake and much, I mean, you know, artificial intelligence as an example offers us incredible opportunity to get very data informed, but it’s also very disintegrating in terms of the humanity and the human connection. And I think that we have to, to your point, build the corpus callosum between all of this artificial intelligence, data driven science with the person, the humanity, the relationship. And you know, when we do that, then I think we have the potential to truly transform the human race into being that embraces collective wellness and good for others and all these nice and important values. And I feel like integrative medicine has a place in this discussion because we’ve been working at this for a long time using the body and how do we support the health of the body in this sort of right and left brained way. And I think that we in integrative medicine are also at a threshold where we’re about to sort of step into this data rich minefield though.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:18:08]:
Data rich minefield.

Lise Alschuler, ND, FABNO [00:18:10]:
And how do we preserve our humanity, the humanity of our patients or our co-learners, as you say, and unite those together into truly a deep kind of enduring health that perhaps we haven’t really been able to do until now. So I mean, again, I think it’s exciting times, but it’s also challenging. I mean, we have a lot to figure out here.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:18:33]:
Yeah, so just in my own personal life, my, my father passed from cancer, multiple myeloma. My mother’s had endometrial cancer. She’s still alive, she survived. I actually assisted in the surgery for the hysterectomy of that. That’s a whole other story. My wife has had breast cancer. I have a brother with prostate cancer. You know, you can’t hardly talk to anyone anymore that doesn’t have cancer in their lives. And so this personal dimension of cancer where, especially where it, for a lot of people it evokes tremendous fear. And so part of what, I don’t know, part of what I think the challenge is, is to help people understand that yes, cancer is a, is a terrible enemy in a sense. On the other hand, it is treatable, it can be worked with. And I’ve seen a number of cancer patients who because of their cancer, their health now is better than it’s ever been? I don’t know. Does that speak at all to what you’ve witnessed in your years of oncology?

Lise Alschuler, ND, FABNO [00:19:42]:
For sure. And I too have been deeply affected by cancer. My father died of pancreatic cancer, but outlived his prognosis significantly and actually discovered greater wellness in the last year and a half of his life than he had had experience for the prior 20. And you know, that was with a very deadly disease that was throughout his body. He was still exceptionally healthy. So, you know, that speaks to the power of integrative oncology. I’ve had breast cancer and I really experienced the power of integrative oncology. So yes, I think cancer is potentially treatable for some people. Many more people are living with cancer as a chronic disease now and living with it, you know, in a well way. And I think that regardless, the diagnosis for everyone is an opportunity to do a pretty serious life, reevaluation and reprioritize what’s important and you know, kind of realign with their core values. So in that way it can be healing regardless of the physical outcome that that may occur.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:20:51]:
Another avenue of help that goes back to the roots here at Riordan Clinic is the. The use of IV vitamin C now is taking on even greater possibilities. Especially the University of Iowa now has come out with this incredible study showing it that you can triple the outcome of stage 4 pancreatic cancer in survival outcome using IV vitamin C in conjunction with conventional chemotherapy. So this is truly an integrative approach that’s occurring right now.

Lise Alschuler, ND, FABNO [00:21:28]:
Absolutely. Yeah. And actually that was one of the things my father did, was intravenous vitamin C and he in fact almost exactly quadrupled his projected survival. So there’s another testimony to that data point.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:21:42]:
Yeah, yeah, that’s great. Well, we could probably sit here and talk a lot. I want to make sure that for those people that are watching, it’ll be, I think it’s November 7th and 8th that we’ll be meeting at Woolsey hall in Wichita State University. It’s an $80 million building. That’s incredible. It’s going to be a great place to have a conference. It is open to the public. Dr. Riordan has always made the conferences at the Riordan Clinic open to the public. People can either come or they can, they can join us online and we, we will be very happy to see, see you there and to hear your words of wisdom and experience and first, you know, like you say, first hand knowledge. If, if you can, if you can face cancer and beat it and become bigger than the cancer, because I think sometimes you’ll feel like they’re, here’s the cancer and here’s them. I think if we can get bigger, be more integrative, look at both sides of the coin, I think we have an opportunity here to make an impact on this growing rate of cancer that we’re facing.

Lise Alschuler, ND, FABNO [00:22:53]:
Yes, I absolutely agree with that. Well, I’m delighted to be joining you all. And I think that for me, it’s always an honor to be able to speak to others about what I’m passionate about within this sort of big basket of integrative oncology. There’s so many tools we have available, so I’m going to be speaking about just one of them, the use of medicinal mushrooms. But there are so many others. And that’s also what makes this exciting. I think that that alone should give people hope who are managing this disease, is that there are always new things to consider. And I think under the guidance of integrative and naturopathic oncologists, that that usage becomes very personalized and potentially very impactful.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:23:44]:
Yeah. Well, Dr. Lise Alschuler, thank you very much for your commitment to humanity, to growing this science of naturopathic oncology, and all you’re doing to help educate the future generation of naturopaths and doctors who are willing to take this broader look and to help us win a victory over this very old disease.

Lise Alschuler, ND, FABNO [00:24:08]:
Absolutely. Well, I’m. Yeah, I’m very happy to be here at Sonoran University and also happy to be joining forces with you. So thank you.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:24:17]:
Thank you, Dr. Lise.

Riordan Clinic [00:24:18]:
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