New Tools Improve Cancer Detection and Treatment Outcomes

0:00 Speaker 1 Progress in cancer. Well, we’ve all suffered for friends, relatives of cancer. What is today is doctor Luis Diaz from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. And Doctor Diaz, as I said to you when we talked previously, my mom passed away in nineteen seventy seven April third, and fifty years later, I would hope we made more progress in

0:34 cancer because and I don’t know, but you’re the expert. You help run Memorial Sloan Kettering, the world famous and people go from the whole world that come to Memorial Sloan Kettering hoping to get a better solution from the you guys from the and give us an update.

1:00 Speaker 2 To do so, and thank you for having me. Cancer is such a scary word. And when I started my training about twenty five years ago, I can tell you that we didn’t have the same tools and the same therapies that we have now to treat cancer. We were diagnosing it too late. The therapies we had were not

1:21 as effective and the side effects were terrible. We now have tools have cancer early so that it can be treated with minimal, minimal surgery, minimal therapy, midial radiation and even in the advanced diseases. We have therapies now that can either cure certain subscessipations or even LinkedIn survival from a few months to many years.

1:45 Speaker 1 Now, there is there any you know, I hate the word to use cure. Do you think that someday they may be a cure or do you think that that our own body could cure things if our immune system work better? And you giver see comparison between medicine and immune systems in our bodies.

2:11 Speaker 2 Yeah, so I think that the dream is and I do think that we can use the word cure. The dream is that a we either prevent the cancer from happening in the same way that we prevent or control heart disease, or treat it in the same way that we treat an infection with antibiotics and just make it

2:29 go away. And there’s a growing list of cancers. Because not all cancers are the same, we can’t say we’re going to cure cancer. We can cure individual subsets of cancers, but there’s a growing list where we have therapies that can melt the cancer away, that can make the cancers disappear, or that can control them over a large period of time,

2:50 and that’s different than a few years ago, five ten, fifteen years ago, we weren’t thinking that way. But part of it is that the immune system, and we can control themmune system better because a lot of the research we’ve been doing has really taught us a lot. We can control it in such a way that in certain

3:07 cases we can make the cancers either get controlled for a long period of time or even in some cases get cured. And we have to say, what does cure mean. The cure means that you’re remission for five years or more.

3:21 And those numbers are increasing.

3:26 Speaker 1 The number one cancer that people think it’s it’s a death sentence, I guess, is uh pancreatic is it?

3:36 Speaker 2 Yeah, pancreatic cancer. But the number one killer in the United States is still lung cancer. But that cancer, those numbers are going down because of smoking cessation and just more understanding of how to screen for it. So if you are a smoker, you’re going to want to get screened by by by a CT scan on a regular basis.

3:55 But following that’s colon cancer, which you want to be screened by colonoscopy. But you’re absolutely right, we don’t have a screening test for pancredit cancer. And if you get diagnosed with pan credit cancer, it’s a really tough tumor and very few patients are cured and survival has been shortened.

4:12 But what you’ll be hearing over the next few weeks is of a new drug that’s come out that is based on the genetics of the cancer, where we can target a certain molecule and we can extend the life of pan credit cancer patients. We probably won’t cure them, but we can extend the life by a few months

4:31 to maybe one to two years.

4:34 Speaker 1 Well one or two years is better than a few months.

4:37 Speaker 2 It really is. It really is, and it gives you time with your family, It gives you time to get things in order. It’s a devastating diagnosis and I’ve treated patients who are young and old and it’s always tough.

4:52 Speaker 1 Have you determined the other thing is determining what things people do? Uh that causes it? Any idea? I mean, I’ve seen some articles in the last few months that they’ve in pancreatic tumors they found plastics and you know, right now, to taboo thing is when you drink water out of plastics or you eat food that’s in plastics

5:21 that the plastics rub off into your into your blood system.

5:28 Speaker 2 So let me begin with it. The plastics. We don’t know yet. There’s a lot of data that suggests that when you ingest plastics, it gets trapped in your body, but we don’t know if it’s causing cancer. And certainly cancer rates in some cases are going down and in other cases are going up. In the case of answers

5:49 of the GI tract, pancer’s cancer, calling cancer, gas er cancer, retal cancer, those numbers are going up, and especially in young people. I’m seeing so many peopeople in their twenties with cancers that you only saw on people in their fifties or sixties. Could plastics have something to do with it, I don’t know, But we do know the causes of

6:09 other cancers. So one, some people have a family history of cancer, and that’s about ten percent of all cancers. There’s another component. What about just smoking, or you be light or if you can expose with radiation. Those cause a big chunk of other cancers. But probably the most common cause of cancer across the population is bad luck.

6:31 And it’s a mutation that happens in the gene as we age and it’s something we can’t control. And so even though that there are causes of cancer, a lot of it’s driven by bad luck.

6:43 Speaker 1 Well you know. I mean it’s good to say that, but I always think that you do something to your body or you don’t give it the nutrients it needs to build up the immune system. And that’s just my personal opinion. In me, I’m just a grocery man.

7:04 Speaker 2 But you know food and you know how to nourish people, right, And I don’t think you’re wrong. I think in the future, we’re going to understand that even if you have the bad luck of a cancer being born in your body, that because you sit in your body, maybe with a little help with nutrition, maybe with a little help of

7:22 a medication, we’ll be able to clear that cancer before it becomes a problem.

7:27 Speaker 1 In addition, what we’re doing right now, I mean, and I have not one of our companies, Cristides and a Gristino. I have not run that company in ten years or fifteen years. But I am trying to tell our listeners and our customers to be healthier. One product that was a surprise my mother and father always cooked it okra.

7:52 According to some science results, if you eat Okra. The Okra removes plastics from your blood system. Heard that at all?

8:02 Speaker 2 I haven’t heard it, but let me look something up really quickly as we talk. Uh there. I think okra has a lot of yeah, fiber there, and we know that diets that are very high in fiber can clean out the GI track, So there might be some truth to that. One thing that Americans don’t eat enough of

8:20 and we do need to eat more of is fiber and Okra may be a good source of that.

8:25 Speaker 1 Well, Doctor Diaz, thank you so much, and thank you for everything you do to help people, and we hope to talk to you again in the near future.

8:33 Speaker 2 Thank you so much, Thanks so much, and thanks for inviting me.