Believe Big Podcast

74-Dr. Steve Rallis - The Role of Stress and Insulin in the Cancer Process

• Ivelisse Page & Dr. Steve Rallis • Season 2 • Episode 74

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In today's podcast episode, Dr. Steve Rallis (The Wellness Doctor) joins me to talk about how stress and insulin can potentially affect a person's health during the cancering process.

Dr.  Rallis sheds light on the crucial role of fasting insulin levels in cancer management, revealing how personalized nutrition plans and stress management strategies can influence metabolic health and overall well-being. Dive deep into the world of integrative oncology, where the intersection of plant medicine, emotional resilience, and individualized care offers hope and empowerment on the journey to healing.

Tune in for expert insights, practical tips, and a holistic perspective that will inspire and empower listeners to take charge of their health and embrace a path of transformation.

Learn More  About Dr. Steve Rallis on His Website:
https://www.wellnessdoctor.ca/

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Ivelisse Page:

Hi, I'm Ivelisse Page, and thanks for listening to the Believe Big Podcast, the show where we take a deep dive into your healing with health experts, integrative practitioners, biblical faith leaders, and cancer thrivers from around the globe. Welcome to today's episode on the Believe Big podcast. My name is Ivelisse Page, and it's an honor to be with you today. Today, we have a wonderful guest and one of my newest friends, Dr. Steve Rallis, The Wellness Doctor from Ontario, Canada, who is here to talk to us about how stress and insulin play a role in a cancering process. Dr. Steve Rallis is a licensed doctor of both chiropractic and naturopathic medicine and adjunct faculty at Trinity Medical School in Integrative Medicine. Dr. Rallis received his undergraduate degree in biological sciences from Western University in London, Ontario, his chiropractic degree from Parker University in Dallas, Texas, and his naturopathic medical degree from the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine. Dr. Rallis has a keen interest in both research and education and his private practice in Ontario is one of the world's first to offer integrative, functional medicine rotations for medical students. His published and ongoing research is focused on the integrative treatment of cancer and metabolic diseases including cancer. He is an author and international lecturer, having lectured to patients and physician groups throughout North America, South America, and Europe. He is married to the beautiful Michelle, who I got to meet this summer, and they have two wonderful children. So, welcome Dr. Rallis to the show.

Dr. Steve Rallis:

Thank you, Ivelisse. It's such an honor being here with you. And Michelle says hi, by the way,

Ivelisse Page:

Oh, great, great, great. So, as you know, our listeners are always interested in discovering what our guest's favorite health tip is. And I know you have many, but can you share one with us?

Dr. Steve Rallis:

I'll share a funny one. Actually, I'll share a real one, but I'll share a funny one too.

Ivelisse Page:

Okay.

Dr. Steve Rallis:

This was loosely attributed to Jack LaLanne. who's kind of that famed fitness guru from many years ago. He would do like a, he would swim and pull tug boats when he was like 70 or 80. Anyway, I don't know if this is actually attributed to him or not, but it was a, this quote, but he always said in terms of nutrition advice, put it in your mouth. If it tastes good, spit it out. I tell my patients when I'm giving them these botanical formulas that I make them, that taste awful, but no, you know what? I think actually at least a theme for me over the last couple of weeks. And I think I'd like this to be my sort of main health, you know, or tip, I guess. It's, it's about gratitude. Nothing occurs without gratitude. Whether that's the treatment you're receiving whether it is nutritional changes to your lifestyle, whether it's, you know, the people that you surround yourself with, the team that you surround yourself with. Gratitude is, you know, in cancer and cancer patients, there's this fine line of optimism and realism this tightrope that has to be walked. Optimism can become delusion. And what makes it real, what grounds a person to reality, no matter what the reality is, is gratitude. Gratitude is that tether. I think that is so important every single step of the process. It's part of what makes your group really so amazing and your entire initiative, you know, Believe Big is about a lot of things, but central to that is also gratitude. You can't experience anything positive in your life without that. And including this whole process, and the process that people go through, which you know, as healthcare providers we're so sensitive to because we go through that with them. And it can be painful, amazing, funny all of the emotions. So yeah, that's, that's my health tip, gratitude.

Ivelisse Page:

I love that. I just actually read something today in regards to suffering and many people listening. We all go through situations where we're suffering, whether it's a loss of a loved one or a disease. And I feel that in that there are certain graces that God gives us that helps us to learn something. So what is cancer teaching us? What is this experience teaching us? And how can, how can I be grateful for that in the sense of having more compassion or having more understanding for people who have chronic illness or other things. So I'm so glad that you mentioned that because it really does help us to go through difficult moments with more peace because we're coming at it from a place of gratitude even in the hard things. So I love that you shared that.

Dr. Steve Rallis:

Yeah. And I think the way you articulate it is probably much better than I did, but that same idea, you know, that it gives you focus on how to rethink things, how to reframe whatever experience that you're going through. If you can reframe it, and this is just good advice for anybody, it could be anything, any challenge in your life. Today, if you happen to listen to this, any challenge that you have, reframe it in the context of What can I be grateful for in this situation? And it changes it completely.

Ivelisse Page:

Yes, 100%. So we may have to have you back on and talk about gratitude, but today we're wanting to discuss insulin and what is insulin? Can you share with us in a basic level, and why do we need to check our fasting insulin levels that you mentioned in a blog this summer?

Dr. Steve Rallis:

Yeah, the most in, I would say, fundamentally, there's a handful of tests in, in, in functional medicine and integrative medicine, integrative oncology, in particular, that have tremendous merit. You could make a strong argument that fasting insulin is probably the most important. Insulin is just a nutrient storage hormone. So whenever you eat something, insulin gets dumped into your bloodstream and helps move that bolus of glucose from the bloodstream into the cells. We know that cancer fundamentally has a metabolic component to it. And metabolic, and this is another thing that really should be explained, because you hear metabolic disease or metabolism or especially for cancer, you hear metabolic disease, which is especially within the context of your audience, people that are using integrative oncology, they will hear that over and over again. And I always explain it like this with our patients. What is metabolism? In very simple terms, it's basically how your body converts food to fuel. That's the very simple definition of metabolism. And cancer cells convert food to fuel very differently than your normal cells. Hence, they have a different metabolism. It's why it's a metabolic disease, and that's why you begin to see all of the changes related to it physically, functionally, pathologically, immunologically,. And central to metabolic disease, in other words, how your body converts food to fuel is insulin. And fasting insulin is one of the best markers and it is almost never measured. It's criminal. It's absolutely criminal because it completely changes the trajectory of your disease. If I was to give you another health tip, if I could just, one more health tip eat like your life depends on it. What does that mean? So it means that nutrition can be used as a very powerful modality in this treatment. If if cancer is in fact a metabolic disease, in other words, it has this dysfunction in converting food to fuel, then it would make sense that food can be a central component to the treatment of this disease. And can tremendously influence the outcome of this disease. And that's improved the outcomes for all, from the standard of care chemo, radiation, surgery, to iV-C to mistletoe, to alpha lipopilic acid, whatever, whatever therapies you were doing, they will be improved by virtue of your diet. And insulin is central to that. So, the reason you measure insulin is because how do you even know whether these this diet you're following is improving insulin? If it's not improving insulin, is it improving your metabolic disease? There's a lot of there's a lot of tradition surrounding maybe tradition is the wrong word beliefs and, you know, like juicing is great for cancer apparently. And is it, isn't it? The question is, is it driving insulin up as one of the markers? So if you have this massive amount of carrot juice. What would that do to your insulin, right?

Ivelisse Page:

And everybody's has different sensitivities to different foods. And so it would be really important not to just say, okay, everyone juices, because I'm one of those that's super sensitive to even natural sugars. And so I have to even limit the amount of fruits that I eat. And even the berries that I have can, you know, cause my insulin levels to raise. And so, but before you go into more detail with that, in the conventional world fasting levels are considered to be normal between 2 and 20. And in the cancer or cancer prevention world, I was told that it should be under 3. Do you agree or do you have a different range for what you feel normal

Dr. Steve Rallis:

that's exactly right. And I'm glad you gave me the US references because I was going to give you the Canadian references. But that is the exact translation. So the Canadian references are 20 to 180. is the normal. And you want them actually less than 30 or 40, which equates to both three to four in between, like less than three and a half. That is spot on, it is critical. And we'll use the kind of like the carrot juice example. Now, if you were to take that carrot juice, maybe if you were to juice two carrots or three carrots, add in some turmeric some ginger, and add in some olive oil to that that same little juice shot, suddenly you're getting all of those benefits, those other nutrient metabolic benefits, but it's a nuanced nutritional approach that is not actually driving insulin. Because you're sensitive to that as one of the known markers of disease progression. So yeah, to your point, that's exactly how you can take sort of old school ideas surrounding diet, but apply it, you know, really modern, our modern understanding.

Ivelisse Page:

And I'm so glad that we're talking about this because another aspect is that I feel like we can focus in on the cancer world is this physical side, right? Like what you're eating, you know, what all the labs are. And we don't put equal amounts of time, at least I didn't, into my emotional side. And stress can cause so much damage to the body. And, you know, in the conventional world, for example, endometrial cancer, which is what I dealt with this past fall is usually diagnosed in individuals who are obese, they're diabetic, they have been on hormone replacement therapy, they had a cycle before age 12, and Lynch syndrome, and I was no to all of those except for Lynch syndrome. And interestingly enough, before my cancer diagnosis, my insulin level this summer was 10.6, and just recently, you're going back to your thing, your comment about is it really improving based on what you're eating, which I went into a modified keto, 70 grams of carbs. I didn't go strict keto. It went down. I just had it tested again. And right now it's at 4. 4. It's a little, still a little higher. I wanted to get under three, but stress has such a huge part of it. So great improvements due to emotional and physical practices that I added. Can you share with our audience ways that acute stress differs from chronic stress in the terms of how it affects insulin levels.

Dr. Steve Rallis:

Both will drive insulin.

Ivelisse Page:

Mm hmm.

Dr. Steve Rallis:

Acute stress is likely going to be worse. Although, you could certainly make an argument that chronic stress over time is going to cause the same net effect. It's just that acute stress will cause the release of stress hormone, specifically cortisol, and cortisol again, will, will affect sugar store glycogen. And glycogen, again, for the audience, you eat sugar. Whatever sugar you don't use at that time gets stored in the liver as glycogen. And if you eat more sugar than you need, because remember there's actually only five grams of sugar circulating in your bloodstream at any one given time. And I'm just going to sidetrack too, because the audience probably knows this, but in case they don't, the reason we use a PET scan to help identify where the cancer may have spread is you're taking a radioactive sugar putting into the bloodstream and it goes and it gets gobbled up by the cancer cells. So I always find it a little bit disingenuine when you hear a doctor say that sugar doesn't matter, or diet doesn't matter. Well, then if it didn't, then the PET scan wouldn't work, you know. And, yeah, so I think that that's relevant. And, when you're stressed, you have cortisol that's released. And again, one of the things, one of the tests that we use with fasting insulin, is fasting AM cortisol. And as that goes up, that glycogens being released, sugar is being released, and a certain amount is great. But the more that happens the more you facilitate insulin or dysinsulinemia. Because essentially the way it works is every time your body releases sugar, whether that's through stress or whether it's through diet, your body releases sugar so that you can go. That sugar then is then insulin will match it. And the more your body keeps releasing insulin, so for example, let's say I had a soda in this water cup, okay, or if it was even diet soda, same idea, the body would be perceiving it as sugar. As I drink it, your sensory receptors are then releasing insulin to try to mimic the amount, because sugar has to be so tightly regulated, it's trying to mimic how much insulin I will need. So if I'm drinking Coke, let's say, all day long my fasting insulin will be through the roof. And to your point, if you're stressed all day long, you're almost going to get the same net effect. And that's really why severe stress and, you know, we'll take detailed intakes on our patients. And it's just so not uncommon that when you hear of a cancer being triggered or a recurrence and you drill down, there has been periods of stress, like significant periods of stress, you know, I mean I spent time with you this summer, you didn't seem stressed to me.

Ivelisse Page:

I was on sabbatical, so that was great. I was starting on my, my healing journey for sure.

Dr. Steve Rallis:

You know, and I'm glad, I'm glad you did. And I wonder too, whether, you know, there's, I mean, I'm a warrior. And I think lots of us are, but I still, we still really don't know how the and why, or we know the hows, like in terms of the biochemistry of how the stress affects it, but really to begin to mitigate that stress, and it's one of the reasons that I wanted to touch on gratitude. Is stress is always about reframing your experience. It's the reason, you know, will always say, like, you can't take it with you, so don't worry about it doesn't matter how much money you make, or how much, like, or whatever you find stressful now, is it really going to be stressful next month or next year or in 10 years from now? So what exactly is it that you're worrying about? This game of life occurs between the ears and especially in my situation where you've over 25 years I can't imagine how many thousands of patients I've sat across. And I listen to their stories and some of them are beautiful. Some of them are tragic and everything in between. But you can't help but think that life that they're experiencing is fundamentally based upon their worldview. How they're seeing the world is how their world is playing out for them, really know. And you have to really be able to step back, abstract yourself from your own life and say, you know, because I think that there's a spiritual us, you know, that's ageless, that real us, and then there's the physical us, and all of the minutiae, all the little things that it's concerned with. And again, I'm not a metaphysician, so I'm not going to pretend to delve into, you know, what I'm not competent to discuss, but I think there's so much more than we can really appreciate and I think that you have to constantly reframe your existence and, I'm here and, the first thing that I always tell myself, even when I'm sitting across from a patient, is I'm glad that they're there. I don't want to always tell them that, or if I see, you know, I but I woke up this morning i was glad that I was going to get to see you. I was glad that I was going to get to spend some time with you. And if I just that alone puts me in the right frame of mind to spend time with you. If you're thinking, oh my god, I'm you know, and I have all of this patient files that I have to get to, and there's so much work that I haven't done and I really don't know what you could possibly bring to a conversation.

Ivelisse Page:

I think all those things are so important and I think one of the really cool analogies I heard from Dr. Rob Reimer recently, he said our emotions, you know, when you're talking about our physical body, our spirit, and our souls, and so many times we rush through life in how we're thinking about things, but also when we're dealing with hard things or if something happens, we kind of, have this suitcase of life per se. And let's say you're going on vacation, everything's neatly folded, everything's clean, you're unpacking, you're at your trip, and as things happen, you know, you start shoving things into your suitcase as you wear them or you're in the, we're in the Amazon, you have muddy clothes, everything gets shoved back into that suitcase on your way home. And, when you get home, of course, you're going to empty out that suitcase. You're going to wash everything, refold it and clean it, hopefully, before you go on your next trip. And I think we need to do that in life where once we've experienced something that's difficult, once we have things that are going through, that we need to constantly process them and not shove them and keep dragging them along in our lives. And so I love that you said that. And that has been such a good visual for me to keep remembering to, you know, each day I sit down, I pray, I write down what's going on emotionally and unpack those things so that you know, we can continue on our lives in a healthy way. So, and I know it's different for each individual, but for those who are listening, whether they're in a cancering process or not what are some practical ways that you can share, you know, besides gratitude, that can help regulate their insulin and stress levels?

Dr. Steve Rallis:

I think plant medicine is perhaps some of the most underutilized in oncology. In your introduction, which was kind of almost hyperbolic, I feel, but nonetheless, In your introduction, one of the things that I'm actually very proud of is that we do integrative medicine rotations with medical students and I'll bring up plants and plant medicines. And, you know, plants are the only medicine on planet Earth that are adaptogenic. And medical students will always ask, what does that mean? What does I've never even heard that term. I'm a third or fourth year medical student never even heard the term adaptogenic. And I said, well, imagine we'll use cortisol because we're talking about cortisol. So you could take a plant, and if your cortisol is low, a plant, whether it's rodeola, or glyceriza or even ashwagandha, it will raise your cortisol level to a healthier level. If your cortisol is high, it will downregulate it and bring your cortisol down. Only plants have the ability as a medicine to work bi directionally. And you look at ginger, like, which we talked about adding to our juice recipe, like ginger, you know, our Western mind is always thinking in terms of what is the most powerful medicinal ingredient in in ginger. So you'll run through the nutrients, all the different medicines. There's 240 or 204 active botanical constituents in ginger, but you're left with gingerol. So our instinct is just pull out gingerol and make it more powerful, patent it and use it whether it's as a supplement or as a drug. And that's not how nature works. Nature works, it's all of the, it's that harmony of all of the different components, all those bioactive constituents within that plant and that plant as a consequence interacts its DNA, interacts with your DNA. And I think that when you talk about what can you do, first of all, if you're stressed. Look at plant medicine. Look at the people that surround you, whether it's the people, the plants, the food. If your medical team is stressing you out, maybe try to find a new medical team. I know that you can't, I know that's not always easy to even do that. But maybe you can find other adjunct providers that can provide a little bit of, you know, part of, I think sometimes what I do is just kind of temper what the oncologist said and help the patient reframe it so that they're not freaking out. They're like, Oh, okay, that makes sense. I mean, no one's out there to do you harm, right. Everyone's trying their best, but sometimes the way we interpret that can be very stressful. So having people in your corner is part of the reason why I love your program so much, too. Because going through that gives people perspective. So plant medicines, like mistletoe is a perfect example. You know, people have wanted for years to find out what's the active constituents of mistletoe, is it the lectins, just pull the lectins out, use those. But it isn't. We do high dose mistletoe, and I think it's because it's the whole plant. And I think that's, part of what makes botanical medicine so amazing. And there's food, of course, higher protein, as an example, is going to downregulate insulin for the most part. higher fat is always going to downregulate insulin. And again high protein but not high protein.

Ivelisse Page:

Can you explain that? What you mean by that?

Dr. Steve Rallis:

Yeah. Healing is different in terms of cancer, you generally want to keep protein to 20 grams or less at a meal. Because if you do, you're getting that healing component without triggering insulin growth factor. So high protein, just like high carbs will actually trigger IGF 1, which is a growth factor for cancer. So you want to keep protein a low to moderate protein, but protein and fat generally will downregulate those cortisol. So between that, plant medicine, finding a network of healthy providers and also, you know, it's like. The reason I had this great patient, and she was a mentor almost to me when I was younger, and she said, you know what, Steve, you know, what's great about being in your forties, you stop giving a about what people think, for and you can, and I remember I was just so impacted by that and she was, she was a hundred percent right. She said, like, you just stop putting up with people's crap. And from one thing that I'll hear with from patients. that are going through, I love your term, the cancering process too, by the way, I've, I've stolen that. When time is precious, you spend it with precious people and you don't tolerate the bull crap anymore. So I think that there's, I think that if you do those things focus on your nutrition, add in plant medicine, surround yourself with people that really warm you. You know, I do think that there's, I try to treat from in here, like how I feel oftentimes. And I think that use that, like how you feel about things, about people and if they don't give you the warm and fuzzies, maybe they shouldn't be in your circle.

Ivelisse Page:

100%, and I think a lot of people don't realize that they have the ability to fire a physician that is not helping them. If it's causing you more stress. If they're fighting you because it's their way or the highway, and they're not willing to work with you as a team, As you mentioned, we have that in a, our series or video series, I Have Cancer, Now What? And we talk about how do you find, that treatment team, what questions do you ask, so that you have those people that are going to be supportive of the way that you want to be in, in this journey. So I thank you for sharing those things. And I can't believe that, you know, we're getting close to our time, but I wanted to ask you another question is, here in the U. S. we have a tool that our integrative doctors are using, and it's called Nutrition Genome. And it helps to evaluate if there are genetic or individual variations that can make some people more susceptible to things. So, for example, an insulin related effects of stress. And I just actually had mine done. After all these years I had mine done. And I found it amazing that my genetics showed that my insulin tends to be regulated depending on my stress level and not a metabolic issue with my labs. I have something called a serotonin receptor that we discovered that has been associated with the reduced ability to regulate chronic stress. So I found that fascinating, you know, dealing with the diagnosis, the stress beforehand, and all those things, which it's so cool to see what your weaknesses are, what your strengths are. But it doesn't mean that that determines your outcome. It just shows these are some things that you can do to help keep that gene off, or to help tweak that so that your body can work at its best and in its best capacities. So, does your practice look at those susceptibilities, and do you help make patients aware of them? And, or what tool do you guys use?

Dr. Steve Rallis:

We don't use that. I'm somewhat familiar with that test and I think it's great. We use pretty standard lab markers partly because if we can, part of it is for cost for sure. And when I was in Ecuador, I lectured on life and death markers related to you know, metastatic disease. But I think it's really important that if those markers improve there are certain situations, where you need to delve a little bit deeper in terms of, ummm epigenetic influences and methylation patterns. Like your pattern is a classic methylation pattern where serotonin goes down. Also affects glutathione pathways and that whole cascade from methionine to S adenosyl methionine down to cysteine and cysteine glutathione. I think you have to support that pathway. And if you don't you become more susceptible, like you said even in the absence of, you know, obviously, I mean, you're in great shape. It's not like, you know, your diet has never been a train wreck. But it tells you how sensitive your insulin can be. And I think that's really important. So yeah, check insulin, fasting insulin, get that checked. Everybody should know what their fasting insulin is, period.

Ivelisse Page:

In closing, is there anything that I didn't ask you that you feel would be important to share in regards to insulin or stress or hormones in regards to cancer?

Dr. Steve Rallis:

I mean, I think that stress and nutrition I think that you need a comprehensive approach. I think you need to work with an integrated provider to really drill down. Because you want to be checking. And this is, you know, something that you said, you may have that quarter cup of blueberries and it may be not very good for you, you know, in terms of insulin. I think that there's a lot of nuance in nutrition, especially with nutrition for cancer. And I think that you need to be testing your labs before and after because you know, and I'll tell patients this all the time I don't know if this is the correct nutritional protocol for you or even IV protocol or but we're gonna test. We're gonna check at every six weeks we're gonna check and if you're improving then we're on the right track and if we're not we course correct. It's important not to be too dogmatic and to be blindly following what you believe is right. If at the end of the day it was KitKats that saved my patient, great, then KitKats are your treatment. I don't think it will be KitKats, but the point is you try not to fall in love with a diet or a nutritional protocol or an IV. You try to look at the patient as an individual and you try to customize and provide individualized medicine. And if you don't it's a disservice

Ivelisse Page:

That's very well said great way to end the podcast and thank you so much for joining us today. I know you're a very busy man and so we appreciate you taking the time to help educate us and and look forward to talking to you soon.

Dr. Steve Rallis:

You too. And I appreciate everything that you do. And I look forward to chatting the next time we chat.

Ivelisse Page:

Sounds great.

Dr. Steve Rallis:

Okay. Take care.

Ivelisse Page:

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