Believe Big Podcast

108-Dr. Lucas Tims - Exploring Ivermectin for Cancer

• Ivelisse Page & Dr. Lucas Tims • Season 4 • Episode 108

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In this episode of the Believe Big podcast, Ivelisse welcomes Dr. Lucas Tims from Root Causes Medical Clinic for an engaging conversation about the emerging use of Ivermectin in cancer therapy. Together, they explore Ivermectin’s historical use, safety profile, and its promising potential as a repurposed, supportive treatment in integrative cancer care.

Dr. Tims emphasizes the importance of personalized treatment plans developed alongside experienced integrative practitioners. The episode also dives into the real-world challenges of integrating Ivermectin into conventional protocols and how to navigate conversations with your care team.

Whether you're a patient, caregiver, or healthcare professional, this episode offers an insightful look into the evolving landscape of cancer care and how combining conventional and complementary approaches may offer more options—and more hope—than ever before.

Learn more about Dr. Lucas Tims here:  Root Causes - Providers

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Ivelisse Page:

Hi, I am Ivelisse Page and thanks for listening to the Believe Big podcast, the show where we take 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 I always appreciate spending this time with you. Today, I am happy to welcome back to the podcast my friend Dr. Lucas Tims of Root Causes Medical Clinic in San Antonio, Texas. Dr. Tims has previously been our guest on two past episodes, episode 10 with IVC in the Cancer Arena and episode 53, which was Sugar and Its Role in Cancer Cells. Most recently, he was a speaker at the Believe Big Integrative Cancer Symposium and also participated in our panel discussion. Today he is joining me to talk about Ivermectin in the Cancer Journey. Originally from Northwest Arkansas, Dr. Tims is a graduate of the University of Arkansas where he majored in microbiology. He went on to complete his medical training at Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine in Tempe, Arizona before moving to Tulsa for an oncology focused residency program of City of Hope, formerly known as Cancer Treatment Centers of America. In 2013, he passed additional board exams to become a fellow of the American Board of Naturopathic Oncology, and we're so grateful to have him back on the show. Welcome back, Dr. Tims.

Dr. Lucas Tims:

Thanks for having me, Ivelisse. Happy holidays to everybody out there listening and yeah. Excited to dive into Ivermectin today.

Ivelisse Page:

Yes. Before we do, I always like to hear what everyone's favorite health tips, and I know in the past you've shared about cold plunging and your tip on gratitude journaling. Do you have another favorite health tip you can share with our listeners today?

Dr. Lucas Tims:

Yeah. A lot of these just come out of, obviously working with patients and trying to do everything we can to optimize their health, but a lot of things that I've found personally helpful for myself and my own health journey. So yeah, the cold plunges and gratitude journal I think are great. Another one that kind of fall falls in that same category of just daily things that I think everybody can be benefiting from and I think we're really underplaying the benefits of something like this is, being really mindful of our light environment and, realizing that there's both good light and bad light. And the quickest tip I have for most people to try to get their relationship with light is to try to get exposure to real sunlight as early in the morning as possible. It does a lot of magical things. You can think of it as like the key turning the ignition and it turns on all your energy systems for the day. The real key in the ignition is your body being your eyes, but your whole body being exposed to that natural sunlight. And it doesn't need to be a sunny day. It doesn't need to be, you don't need to be on the beach. You can be anywhere and even just that low angle light. Again, is that key in the ignition for all your systems to come online. And I think most people notice that they do that consistently, that they have better energy, that they have better appetite control, that they sleep better, their mood's better. And they're just overall gonna have a more optimized system in terms of their energy, their metabolism, their hormones across the board.

Ivelisse Page:

I, I love that because it's, it doesn't cost anything. I, we have all the gadgets, red light therapies and PEMF mats, but this is just natural light. How much time do you say would be ideal?

Dr. Lucas Tims:

It's funny, they've done studies and they've actually shown that as little as two minutes of exposure has a profound effect. Now, I. I think everybody should be overachieving. On, on these cold winter mornings, two minutes can seem like an hour. Know that even a very short amount of time can still turn that key for you. But I generally counsel people to try to get 10 to 15 minutes if they can.

Ivelisse Page:

Okay. That's a great tip. I, I actually do that'cause I let the dogs out in the morning and we have a fenced in yard and a, and on our porch. So I let'em out and I just look towards the sun. Thankfully we're very sunny here in Colorado, but even on days like today where we've had snow we can, I can just look up and I do notice a difference. So I'm glad that the science matches how I feel in regards to sunlight.

Dr. Lucas Tims:

Yeah and key'cause. Again, we talked about good and bad light, and of course we're all, glued to these devices now. So if you can make the exposure to the real light. Before you start looking at your screens, it's even more helpful.

Ivelisse Page:

Yes.

Dr. Lucas Tims:

Yeah.

Ivelisse Page:

Love that. I love that. Just little

Dr. Lucas Tims:

bonus piece to that,

Ivelisse Page:

just outta curiosity. There's these new alarm clocks called, I think Hatch or something like that, that mimics the sunlight, so that you wake up more naturally and easier. Does that have a similar effect or No? Just definitely the natural sunlight.

Dr. Lucas Tims:

Yeah, I think we're seeing these sort of hack options across the board, whether it's with grounding mats or blue light blocking glasses or these natural light mimicking things. And those are always, those are great to like fill in gaps. I don't think they ever fully replace the like real thing.

Ivelisse Page:

Yeah.

Dr. Lucas Tims:

So strive for the real thing as much as you can, but if you're just in some weird situation where you're not gonna be able to get outside or, you wanna, there's some days where it's harder than you others do that as an alternative, but. It's not a substitute for the real thing.

Ivelisse Page:

Okay. Good. Good. Thank you for sharing that. I love that tip. Getting into Ivermectin, this has been a topic that so many people have been asking us questions about. It's, it became even more popular during the COVID time. But in the sense for cancer. And for listeners who may only know Ivermectin as an anti-parasitic drug, can you explain what it is and why researchers began looking at it for potential anti-cancer effects?

Dr. Lucas Tims:

Yeah, it's got quite a history behind it. As you said, a lot of people maybe not even a lot of people I don't think many people knew what Ivermectin was until probably five years ago. And as we know, it didn't really burst on the scene as a cancer drug. It burst on the scene as something to help with COVID-19. But it's a drug that's been around since the seventies. It was developed in Japan. It's a, like you said, an anti-parasitic or the fancy name for that as an anthelmintic drug. The least fancy term for it is a dewormer. But it's one of many different types of anti parasitic drugs. It was specifically found to be effective against certain types of parasites and worms, especially ones that, cause there's a really devastating disease that exists in Africa called River Blindness, there's a more fancy name for it, but that's what people know. It, they, these people get, they basically they become blind because of it. Their whole lymphatic system gets swollen and they can have really, really bad, ugly deterioration of their body from it. So it was, developed as a cure for that. And it does and at a very effective rate, cures that disease. And so it was. It was cherished as a, an essential medicine really. People call it a wonder drug. You don't get, you don't hear that term thrown around a lot. There's maybe a handful of drugs over the years that have been given that title, aspirin and certain antibiotics and, real lifesaving medications. And been around a long time. Been used for parasites for a long time. As drugs go down their journey of evolution and the longer they're around, they go off patent. And then a typical thing to happen when drugs go off patent is manufacturers like Merck who developed ivermectin, they start looking for, can we repurpose this? There's new drug development and then there's repurpose drug development. And so what we found is there's a lot of drugs that might have been initially tagged as doing one thing really well, but we find that oh, it also might work for other things.

Ivelisse Page:

Yes.

Dr. Lucas Tims:

So Ivermectin, in the, through the eighties and nine, I think early nineties is when it went off patent and saw about a 10 to 20 year run of publications coming out about Ivermectin potential role in, in helping with other types of conditions. Okay. It's been approved to help with some other types of skin disorders. Rosacea's a one that's pretty well known. You can use it topically for that. But in, in that whole mix of repurposing and looking for off-label targets. Again, we're always looking for things that can help with cancer because that's just a problem we haven't really found a lot of good solutions for unfortunately. So there's always labs across the world that are looking for repurposing drugs for cancer, for cancer treatment, and so we've got dozens of studies that have come out. Now, these are all what we call preclinical studies, right? These are bench side research. They're not human studies. They're in mice. They're in, test tubes, petri dishes, et cetera. But that's where we start. And that's what gives us a, that's what generates these hypotheses that we then, take and say, okay, it's safe, it's tolerable. It shows some signal of efficacy. Maybe we should start looking at this in humans. And so unfortunately we haven't really gotten to that step very much with Ivermectin and a lot of these other repurposed drugs for cancer. We're getting there. Again, like we talked about, you. Unless you can patent it, it's hard for, it's hard to get big money behind it. And research right now is expensive to do.

Ivelisse Page:

Very we, we know that well with our phase two with missile tub that we're trying to continue on it. It is it is a expensive route, but very, yeah. Important to continue to do. Now, many substances show anti-cancer activity in lab studies like you're talking about, but what makes Ivermectin scientifically noteworthy compared to other repurposed drugs like we've also heard fen-ben fenbendazole, or menbendazole if I say that correctly. Correct. Correctly. Yeah.

Dr. Lucas Tims:

Yeah. I stumble with those sometimes. A lot of longer words that are hard to get out outta mouth. Yes. So yeah, you're right. There are some unique characteristics to Ivermectin. A lot of these anti-parasitics have a broad effect in terms of how they help with cancer and more, more importantly, the immune system. Okay? So it's important to know that these drugs are really working more on what we'd call the defensive side of the ball. So you've got chemotherapy and radiation and surgery, which I consider the offensive side of the ball. And then you've got all the stuff that I do, the more integrative stuff, diet and nutrition and herbs and vitamins and na, you name it, mistletoe. These are all things that are working on the defensive side that can block pathways that cancer cells use to, to grow and divide. We call those anti-proliferative effects. They can also help to induce programmed cell death. So convincing the cancer cells to commit suicide on their own and also blocking a lot of the signaling pathways that we see help cancer cells recruit new blood vessels and spread and metastasize other parts of the body. So we're seeing across the board with a lot of these anti-parasitics, the ones you mentioned, fenbendazole, all the azole drugs, but Ivermectin as well, that they have this kind of broad effect on cancer cells and particularly cancer stem cells. I don't know, we've probably dived into this a little bit on some of the previous discussions we've had, but it's always a good thing to remind people that there's two different types of cancer cells in, in a tumor environment. There's the cancer stem cells, which are the initiating origin cells that start to seed the tumor and then they give rise to their offspring and chemotherapy, radiation, a lot of the targeted therapies, the offensive plays. They work really good on the offspring cells. They're not good on the they're completely useless for the most part, for the cancer stem cells. And these are the ones that remain and tend to keep coming back and are much more resistant to drugs and can mutate and much easier for them to spread and form new tumors somewhere else. These are the ones that the conventional side really have problems with. And so when we're looking at these repurposed drugs and all the things we do on the defensive side. A lot of them are much better at addressing the stem cells.

Ivelisse Page:

Yes. And I, I've heard, I think the latest statistics, and tell me if I'm wrong, but I think it was like 75% of cancers recur, and it's because of those circulating stem cells that aren't addressed in most people's cases because they're just doing the conventional side. And that's why it's so important to integrate. So you're not only attacking the tumor like you're saying, offensive, but also defenses. So it never returns back. And that's where the high dose vitamin Cs and these repurposed drugs that you're talking about and mistletoe come into play to make sure it doesn't rear its ugly head again.

Dr. Lucas Tims:

A hundred percent. If you're going to play your Super Bowl, which you got cancer, everyone's pretty much, like this is your Super Bowl. You don't just wanna walk out there with 11 guys on offense. You're gonna need both sides of the ball.

Ivelisse Page:

Yes.

Dr. Lucas Tims:

And then, special teams is the person, and it's their mindset. It's all the things that they come and they bring to the table as an individual. So that's the way I like to look at it. And but yeah. Why wouldn't you want to have a really good defensive scheme for the offensive side of the cancer, which is always on offense, it seems

Ivelisse Page:

yes.

Dr. Lucas Tims:

If we're not, we're not making those defensive plays and scheming for that, then it's hard to win those Super bowls.

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Ivelisse Page:

Yes, and I think that there are also some studies that mentioned that Ivermectin may enhance responses to immunotherapies such as checkpoint inhibitors. Can you explain this connection for our listeners?

Dr. Lucas Tims:

Yeah. So again, this is one of the many ways that Ivermectin seems to exert these, a therapeutic effect on the tumor microenvironment is by modifying the expression of some of these proteins that exist on the cell surface, in which, you know, all these different little docking areas and receptors and proteins on the cancer cell surface determine what might be effective at stopping that cell. And so some of the cells are already set up and programmed to respond well to immunotherapy because they have a overexpression, or at least a adequate expression of these PDL-1 receptors, which is where those drugs like Keytruda and Opdivo and these checkpoint inhibitors, dock, and then exert their effect. And but that's only about 20 to maybe 30% at most of cancers have that expression. Ivermectin and other antiparasitic drugs and repurpose drugs, and even things like IV vitamin C and and mistletoe have the potential to augment what's being expressed on these cancer cells surface. So you can essentially turn a, a cold tumor into a hot tumor, meaning you start to force that tumor, those tumor cells, to express these docking points for the immunotherapy drugs and for different chemo and targeted therapies as well. So it's, again, it's the defense kind of setting up the offense, right? You get a big stop and you sack the quarterback and you get a fumble and all of a sudden your offense is starting on, the other, the opponent's 20 yard line rather than your own 20 yard.

Ivelisse Page:

Yes. I love that analogy. What do we currently know about the safety of ivermectin when used in cancer patients, especially given its long history of use for other conditions?

Dr. Lucas Tims:

Yeah, the safety is pretty much, for me, when I'm evaluating treatments, you're gonna look at three, three main things, safety, tolerability, and effectiveness. And they're gonna be in that order, right? And I don't care how effective something is, if it's not safe and tolerable, doesn't matter. So the safety studies and the fact that it's been used since, effectively well in animals since the late seventies, but in humans since the mid eighties, millions of doses administered. This is, this is a drug until COVID that most people agreed people should be able to buy over the counter. Okay? Like right next to the aspirin. So that's the level of safety we're talking about. Now, if you do mega dosing, you can see some problems with, I you, if you mega dose, any you overdose on water, you can have a problem. So there, there's always a sort of, there's a dose at which everything can cause a problem, but used correctly, ivermectin is one of the safest things you could put a patient on.

Ivelisse Page:

That's amazing. And I've been saying this in the last few podcasts because I really feel it's important. We see so many, medical, even integrative influencers out there. P patients who have had success with one therapy or the other. Over the years I've always been super cautious not to share my protocol outside of basic information of nutrition, mistletoe. Sure. Because everyone's situation is different. Everyone's internal environment is different, and I didn't wanna unintentionally share information that could potentially harm somebody else. And I think people are hearing people's success stories and grabbing onto anything that they hear and saying I'm gonna incorporate that too. Yeah. And so I really wanna stress, it's so important that a person is followed by an integrative practitioner who is trained like you are and everyone at Root Causes and other of the integrative doctors that we work with because you know the nuances of what treatments they're currently doing, what their internal environment is showing and whether or not this would be effective for them. Are there cases, and I think you did share before that there are times when Ivermectin shouldn't be used. When are those times?

Dr. Lucas Tims:

Yeah, there, there's a few, cautions you wanna watch for. Obviously there's some tumors that it seems to be more effective for than others. I ivermectin, I don't use a ton in brain tumors, just'cause it doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier very well. You probably want to use mebendazole or albendazole in those cases. Patients are on a lot of psych meds or blood thinners. You gotta be cautious. I'm not saying it's a contraindication, but you gotta be cautious with those meds and make sure that you're maybe lower, dosing lower. And then I've seen some patients just for whatever reason, idiosyncratic issues that have had, some vision disturbances with Ivermectin. Even at lower doses. So you gotta monitor these people. I even though my comment about, hey, this should be over the counter and all that. Again, I, that doesn't, I'm not saying it shouldn't be. I'm just saying these are the potential pitfalls that we can fall into with anything just because of idiosyncratic issues. And that's why it's best, especially in a cancer setting. There's a lot to consider, a lot of context, right? And you need a defensive coordinator to help you draw up your plays and get your guys in the right position. If you want to have the best success, but most people that are DIYing this, they're unlikely to cause any problems, overwhelmingly very safe, okay? They may not be dosing it right to get the best effectiveness out of it. They may not be combining it with the other strategies that are gonna leverage the effects and lead to the best outcomes. Safety wise, I don't have a lot of concern, but in terms of getting the most out of that therapy, yeah, you should always be working with someone who's done this before. The stakes are high. Like I said, this is Super Bowl, you don't wanna be kinda, walking out there without your team and your coaches and your support.

Ivelisse Page:

Yes. Yeah, really well said. Now, I've also seen that there's emerging discussion about nebulized ivermectin for lung tumors. Is there any early evidence or rationale behind this method of delivery with it?

Dr. Lucas Tims:

I love ne nebulizing. Anytime you can get direct delivery of a compound to, to where the disease is, the co the cancer is, whether it's, topical for some types of tumors or breathing it directly into the lungs, or in some cases, injecting right into tumors, you're always gonna usually get a better response. Just'cause the, you're bypassing that digestion, metabolism, bioavailability that's an issue with everything. Ivermectin has really good bio-availability or from an oral standpoint though, it's not, it doesn't tend to be a problem. But I think just the nature of trying to get better responses and better outcomes. We're gonna try to use those more direct routes. And so I've heard of, I've never had patients nebulize ivermectin. We nebulize a lot of other things for patients, but I've never really felt the, the need to do that with that particular compound. The oral absorption's really good. So I'm not saying there couldn't be benefit, but Okay. Personally, I haven't felt the need to do that.

Ivelisse Page:

Okay. Great. Great. What are some key questions you encourage patients to ask their oncologists when they wanna explore Ivermectin as part of their care plan?

Dr. Lucas Tims:

That's a tricky one.

Ivelisse Page:

Yes.

Dr. Lucas Tims:

It's it can put patients in a difficult situation because it's highly unlikely that your oncologist is going to prescribe it for you. It's highly unlikely that they're gonna be supportive of it. They only see the offensive side of the ball, unfortunately. Best case scenario, they're gonna say, yeah, you can do that. I don't think it'll help, but sure, if you want to do it, knock yourself out. That might be the most positive thing they'll hear from them. Of course there might be some outliers. There's some oncologists out there that, definitely see the big picture. But normally you're, patients are discussing this with, their integrative practitioners like myself, or I would dare to say, most patients on Ivermectin that have cancer are doing it on their own. Wow. Which is, it's unfortunate. When you don't feel like your doctor necessarily has your best interest in mind, it makes you want to, keep some of those things to yourself. And, there's a lot of fear of patients getting fired by their oncologist if they're not keeping with the protocols that are prescribed and sticking to that. So this is a daily struggle with, the co oncology landscape. Even for things like mistletoe too. It's just daily, Ivelisse, you've been on it for years now. And I'm still having to do a lot of education and help patients have those conversations. Reaching out to doctors, trying to help them understand where we're coming from with this stuff. And it's just philosophically it's hard for them to get on board with it, but, gradually, slowly we're getting there.

Ivelisse Page:

Yes. I think so. And I think another thing is that we stress this when patients call into Believe Big, and that's finding that right oncologist, we have a Frequently Asked Questions to ask oncologists when you are interviewing them. We say interview at least three from different hospitals if you're able to, because this person's gonna be following you for a very long time, at minimum of five years. And so you wanna make sure that they're someone that's gonna be supportive or at least open to your approach to treatment. I literally interviewed three from three different hospitals before I found the one that we ended up with that really was open to this side of care. So yeah, that, that is a really important thing to, to note and ultimately really sharing with patients that we are the CEO of our own health. Like even though they're on your team and they may not agree ultimately, as an adult, you really need to be your own advocate and say this is what I am doing and I feel strongly about it and here's why. And I think if you have the evidence to back it up most of the time like that you said there, they'll be like, oh, okay. I don't think it's gonna help, but feel free. And it's, I think it's gonna take a long time before they see this side of care merged into how we prefer it outside of what's normally seen as integrative in these big hospitals, which is massage, acupuncture. Yeah. That's what they consider integrative, which is good.

Dr. Lucas Tims:

Which are great and supportive and, complimentary. But, there's just a whole nother world of things we can do. To set people up for success and, at the end of the day, we should that's what we should all be wanting for our patients. We, it shouldn't be a my turf. You're, it shouldn't be a turf war thing. Yeah. And the oncologist are just gonna have to, they're gonna have to just face reality at this point. Patients are awake, most of them are. And they're getting better messaging from people like you guys and the evidence is there. We're not doing things that are not evidence-based. We're just, we're trying to, we're trying to do everything we can. At the end of the day, I want to talk to my patients and say, look, we're gonna do everything we can. This is you. You have a life-threatening disease. Why would you not wanna do everything you can that would give yourself a shot to have a good outcome? If it's safe, it's tolerable, and there's a signal of effectiveness. Why not?

Ivelisse Page:

Right there, there leave no stone unturned. Yes. I think it's so important. And as we close out this episode, I wanted to ask you, is there anything that I haven't asked you in regards to Ivermectin that you would feel would be important for our listeners to know or to hear from you about?

Dr. Lucas Tims:

I think it's just being really honest about where we're at with it. We've got good early signals of positive effects there. There's no final answers here. Okay. There, we don't have the human data that we want to be able to say definitively how much it's gonna help someone or not. We know it's safe, we know it's tolerable, and 99.9% of situations. But I wouldn't be relying on Ivermectin or Fenbendazole or any of these repurposed drugs as your approach to your cancer. Again, just like the, the inverse of my argument with, you don't just want to do the offense, you need the defense. Defense alone's not gonna get it done either, usually, I would just caution people about DIYing it and only using things like ivermectin, fenbendazole. I know there have been some anecdotal stories out there on people having tremendous results with those. I always wonder how much else they're doing or how truthful they're being about some of these outcomes. My experience, it can be a very helpful piece of your defense. It's not the whole defense, so should probably just one, one linebacker, one, one defensive end. So you need to have a bigger plan in place and work with someone who's qualified and has experience.

Ivelisse Page:

Yeah. That's great advice. Thank you Dr. Tims for joining us today, and we really appreciate your time and joining us.

Dr. Lucas Tims:

Thanks for having me.

Ivelisse Page:

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