Chris Wark (00:00)
everybody, today my guest is Dr. Matthew Lederman. He's a board certified internal medicine physician, New York Times bestselling author, and you might recognize him from the documentary Forks Over Knives. Although it may maybe it's been a few years since you've seen it. If you haven't seen it, let me just recommend it to you because it is a fantastic documentary about the power of whole food plant-based eating for.

disease prevention and reversal. And so anyway, Dr. Lederman uh Dr. Lederman and I met at the plant-powered party in Las Vegas this year. And it was just great to connect. And I thought he'd be wonderful to have on the podcast. Anytime I have a chance to interview a doctor that is focused on diet and lifestyle medicine, who is

Taken their time to research independently, because they're not taught this stuff in med school, and really has a passion for helping people actually get well and not stay medicated for the rest of their lives for preventable and reversible chronic diseases. I want to interview that doctor because uh there aren't that many out there, although the the numbers are growing, which is very encouraging. Um

But Dr. Lederman is one of the, you know, he's been around a while. And so he's not new to the game. He's seen a lot and uh and I just appreciate him and the work he's doing. So, Dr. Lederman, great to see you.

Matthew Lederman (01:32)
Great to be here. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure to meet you too. I love all your work.

Chris Wark (01:37)
Thank you. That means a lot. It definitely means a lot to to be appreciated, especially by somebody in the medical community and uh who's on the front lines working with patients every day. And you know, what I'm trying to do is, you know, I'm not a doctor, but I'm a cancer survivor and a patient advocate. And I'm just trying to encourage people and empower them with useful information and to give them hope that they're not um a victim of disease.

And that they can actually make changes to their life that'll improve their quality of life, that will change their health and help them heal. So, you know, that's uh that's what I'm trying to do. I've certainly received a fair, fair amount, probably an inordinate amount of attacks from conventional medical people uh who don't like this message.

And um so yeah, thanks.

Matthew Lederman (02:33)
Yeah.

No, I mean what you do giving people hope, especially around a disease where it immediately induces trauma and hopelessness is a wonderful, wonderful gift and so important for people that actually want to heal and transform their health. You can't do it without hope and feeling safe and empowered.

Chris Wark (02:57)
Yeah. And you know, the the big tragedy, and I talk about it all the time, is that patients, let's just say the vast majority of cancer patients, but hey, this this translates to diabetes and heart disease and you know, autoimmune. But the vast majority of cancer patients are never told that there are specific changes they can make that will improve their odds of survival significantly. Even if they're doing all the treatments. Like there's

You know, there's so much more they can do to help themselves and they're just not told. So I'd love to to dig into that with you, but before we get to it, how did you become who you are today? Because I I know, well, I'm assuming, I'm assuming you had very conventional medical training, a conventional upbringing, you know, at some point there was a light bulb and there there was a shift in your thinking. How did that come about?

Matthew Lederman (03:50)
Yeah, I'm the son of a cardiologist. So medicine, I was always seeing him talk to patients and help them out and go to the emergency room and be on call. And I thought it was really cool that he was able to help people in the time of need. And he could speak a language that most people didn't understand and he could help them understand it. And one of the things that he did that I really liked was he just talked to them as people. He gave out his phone number. He would have them call him Steve and not Dr. Lederman.

And I I said this, there's something about this. And I just wanted to be able to speak that language too and help people in that way. So that's why I went into medicine. But I quickly learned in the conventional healthcare system that wasn't for me. And I was going to leave medicine altogether, but I stumbled across nutrition and lifestyle and the impact that could have. And that gave me this new energy to try and help people.

And then over the years, as I was doing using it, um, I saw such amazing results that I never looked back.

Chris Wark (04:56)
What were you seeing, like jump jump back to that time, like what were you seeing or learning that was that was turning you off, that was sort of you know, pushing you away or repelling you from conventional medicine?

Matthew Lederman (05:10)
I'll never forget going in we had a clinic, so you had a when you were when I was a resident and it was you'd go into the rooms and you'd have these patients that came to see you for free because they couldn't aff they couldn't afford to pay, they didn't have insurance, and they would have back pain or some other symptom that you would give them medication for and didn't work or it worked very poorly, and they and you'd tell them to lose weight and they would gain weight.

And you tell them eat healthy and they would but I didn't really know what healthy was. I didn't know how to help them lose weight. So we used to joke, and I feel a little bit guilty about this even when I bring it back up, but we would joke. We would say, well, we gave them that pill. Did you try this pill? Oh, did you just did you what about this pill? Just give them that pill and they'll be back in six weeks, but at least you'll give them a pill and they'll they'll go away and and they and then they'll you know, you'll you'll done your job.

And we knew the pills weren't going to work very well or at all, depending on the situation, but we had nothing else to do. We had nothing else to give them. And we were all just like sheep, just doing it because that's what our superiors did. And I'm thinking to myself, if this is the only way to practice medicine, I don't want to do it. But turns out there's another way. So chronic, especially because I was working in a chronic disease clinic.

It just it just it just didn't work with the tools that you're given in conventional medicine.

Chris Wark (06:42)
Well, hey, I don't fault you for it at all. be I get it. Because A, you're trained to be a pill dispenser, right? And then B, patients expect a pill, right? That's what they

Matthew Lederman (06:52)
Yes.

Chris Wark (06:53)
want. If they leave without a pill, uh, you know, I mean, I've had lots of doctors tell me like they're really irritated. They come in, they want a pill for their ill. And, you know, just give me, give me a pill. You don't have a pill for this or that, you know. So, like, the fact that it

you know, that you were joking around about it with your other doctors to me is not a sign of being callous or, you know, uncaring. It's just a sign of the absurdity of a of being in an impossible situation where you all know you're not helping anybody and you're just

Matthew Lederman (07:24)
Yes.

Chris Wark (07:25)
doing what you're supposed to do and what you're expected to do. And I think there's a lot of people, just normal people, that don't understand

the frustration that doctors have that they have and that they feel being trapped in a system like that. Cause there's there's so many great doctors out there. There's a few bad ones, but there's a lot of great ones. And they're just trapped in a in a system that pays them really well, but doesn't pr produce good results for patients.

Matthew Lederman (07:54)
Yeah. That's the problem, is that most of the doctors out there would want to help people. Some of them still think they are. In certain situations, I'm gonna be fair, they they do help around certain diseases. But

Chris Wark (08:07)
Sure.

Matthew Lederman (08:07)
for majority p specifically chronic disease, it's it's rare and the the magnitude of the help if you are helping is pretty pretty small. So if you could give them a system where they could make a living paying off their

their crazy amounts of loans a lot of the time and be able to feel good about what they're doing because it's actually working, they would jump at that opportunity. But that's just the system isn't set up that way. So they feel stuck, which is why a lot of physicians are depressed and they get burnt out. I was just at dinner with a a a friend last night who's a a neurosurgeon and he was doing back plane back pain clinic.

And he does one thing that he works in the an emergency, helps people with strokes, and he's in there and helping to remove the clot and can help a lot of people in those acute situations where I think conventional medicine is really good. But then this chronic back pain stuff, he said, there's nothing worse than hating your patients. And because there was nothing he could do, and it was so demoralizing and so painful that everybody was miserable, the doctors and the patients.

Imagine imagine people having to get up in the morning and do that every day and and hating your patients. And that comes across now. You'll see you'll see that in the medical system where they just don't treat you very well. It's not because they don't

Chris Wark (09:34)
Yeah.

Matthew Lederman (09:35)
care. They're just they're just so

unhappy.

Chris Wark (09:37)
Yeah. Yeah. I've seen that. I understand it. In fact, I've interviewed, and I'll put links below in the show notes, folks, but I've interviewed two um MDs who are back pain specialists who have left the conventional model uh and both advise against surgery. They're both against surgery, they're against medication generally, right? They're not and they've realized they can help people heal back chronic back pain with methods besides surgery and pills, which

course rarely work. And um, but yeah, I'll put resources to that. But yeah, there there is another way. You you can you can heal, you can reverse these conditions, so many of these conditions. It's so encouraging to know it, but um so many patients feel hopeless, helpless, powerless, um, because they're they just go round and round in a circle, uh, w in the conventional medical system where they, you know, it doesn't matter which doctor they go to, they're getting

You know, it's a different pill or maybe it's a different surgical procedure recommended. And, you know, I d I certainly have family members that have been through that. Back surgeries, chronic pain, and they're they're suffering. They're suffering.

Matthew Lederman (10:49)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Wark (10:50)
You know, it it made them sometimes worse, but not definitely not better. and it's like the best case usually is uh is it's no it's not any worse. So

And that's not that's not good. That's not what we want. Okay. So uh back in back going back into your story. What was the first information? Do you remember like the spark of hope that happened in your life where you discovered diet and lifestyle medicine, evidence based nutrition, you know, that that whole world? Do you remember the the the moment or the season or the the specific people or books or

Like what happened where you were like, oh wow, this is there's something here, there's something really good here that I need to learn more about.

Matthew Lederman (11:40)
Yeah, I was reading a book, um and halfway through this book, which was actually about weight loss, which it's a it's another story as to why I was reading that book, but it was by Alan Carr, The Easy Way to Lose Weight. And I think he's a natural hygiene guy, if I remember correctly, or that's what he was following. And I remember halfway through I was on the Atkins diet, by the way, because that's what everybody in my residency program was telling to be healthy. So I was

ranch on t ranch dressing on top of chicken was the healthy meal of the day. And no. No, I was not

Chris Wark (12:11)
Yeah. And wait, were you were you overweight or obese at the time? Okay. But you were just

yeah, you were just doing it 'cause it was the healthy healthy fad.

Matthew Lederman (12:21)
I

I was doing that because everybody said that was healthy. I think the South Beach diet was pretty big at that point. I don't know if you remember that diet.

Chris Wark (12:28)
I remember it but I'm not I'm not entirely sure what it was. Was it low carb?

Matthew Lederman (12:32)
Yeah, low, you know, low carb, just a a different spin on low carb. And I'm reading this book and I'm think it tell how great I'm gonna feel. And I had different gastro you know, like reflux and I had irritable bowel and I had just all sorts of GI symptoms and I wasn't sleeping as well and wasn't feeling great and that type of stuff, nonspecific

Chris Wark (12:56)
Yeah.

Matthew Lederman (12:56)
stuff. And they said how great you're gonna feel. And I said, I think this book is gonna tell me to be vegan though.

That's what it was. And I'm like, my God, it's gonna tell me I don't want to be vegan. But it said I was gonna feel so good that I decided to give it a try because that's the way I work. I like to try something a hundred percent and prove that it doesn't work or prove that it does work, but I'm gonna do it a hundred percent and see. So I ate rice and beans for a week. Just rice and beans. And I couldn't believe how good I felt. I was shocked. And all I'm eating is rice and beans. And I'm like, this is amazing. But I was

I was expecting it to feel terrible because you can't live off rice and beans, right? That's not healthy. There's not and there's not enough protein, whatever other crap I was thinking of at the time. But I then said, you know, I'm gonna get I'm not getting enough protein. And I read a book and I said, my goodness, I'm getting enough protein. Cause I'm looking for reasons to not do this diet. And I said, well, I can't use protein. So I looked for another reason. I can't get enough calcium. I read about that. I'm like, my God, you can get enough calcium too. This is terrible. I'm gonna have to do this diet, I think. But I'm I'm like, I looked for another excuse.

And I said, I can't live off rice and beans. So it's not, it's not possible. But I got a vegan cookbook and I remember trying to make vegan French toast. Took me five hours to find these ingredients and learn how to make this vegan French toast because I never heard of half this stuff. And I did it and it tasted delicious. And at that point I said, Well, I'm out of excuses. I'm going to do this diet until there's a reason why I can't do this diet. So if there's something, and I said that at the time, I said, if there's something.

that I wanna eat, that I can't make in this plant-based way, I'll eat the animal based way. But that's gonna be a last resort instead of the first resort. And I never had to. I cause I pushed myself to say, I gotta try plant based first. So I did that and that was a what, twenty, twenty something years ago. So haven't looked back since.

Chris Wark (14:49)
That's amazing. Well, I can tell you I rice and beans make me so happy. Like I I am such a like I'm so easy to please, you know. I'm like rice and beans. I'm I'm happy. Like I don't need yeah, I don't need fancy anything fancy. I could I could eat rice and beans pretty much every day, every meal. Like, yeah, it's obviously I I enjoy variety too, but

That's great, man. I love that story. And it and and I love the fact that you basically you just treated it as a personal experiment. And that's what I encourage folks to do as well. It's like, look, if you're skeptical about this, that's normal. You don't have to be a believer, right? You don't have to be a believer to conduct a personal experiment. Um, but if you have a chronic issue, right? You got chronic pain, you got chronic digestive problems, whatever, some chronic ill health issue.

Why not adopt a whole food plant-based diet? Give yourself 30 days or 60 days or 90 days, but give yourself a uh time frame and just be 100% committed to it for that time frame and see how you do. And if you really want to kick it up a notch, I suggest get your blood work done at the start and then get it done again in 30, 60, or 90 days. And

Because how you feel is one thing. And of course, we want people to feel better. But also when you see improv improvements in your blood, then it becomes really real. Then it's not subjective, right? Then it's not like, well, I feel better, but maybe it's just, you know, it's springtime now. And I started in the winter and I wasn't feeling that great. So, you know, maybe it's just because it's in a different season or, you know. So I'd love for you to answer this question. What are some of the changes that you see in people's blood work?

you know, significant blood markers that improve when they adopt a whole food, plant based diet and get off a diet that's really high in animal food, processed food, and junk food.

Matthew Lederman (16:54)
Yeah, so real quick though, like I like what you're saying, because I tell people to prove me wrong. Do it for 30 days and prove to me that your numbers don't get better or you don't feel better in some meaningful way. And it's a challenge. And you have nothing to lose because in 30 days you can go right back to eating whatever you want to eat. So I hope people keep an open mind. That's that's how you grow, that's how you learn, and you know, do what you want in the end. So

That's important. And then as far as the changes, people will see improvements in their blood pressure, in their blood sugar. They'll see they'll usually even measure differences in their sleep if they if they measure different uh sleep scores. They'll get um their stamina, their uh but I their lipid profiles, so their cholesterol, so uh BM you know weight.

They'll see those are those are the big ones. CRP like um they'll see some inflammatory markers improve. And then you can measure more uh esoteric labs, but those are those are a good start that we would see pretty commonly.

Chris Wark (18:11)
That's what we see in our community too. Yeah. We see people

Matthew Lederman (18:13)
Yeah. It's just

Chris Wark (18:14)
they lose weight, th have more energy, they notice that right away. The weight starts coming off. They notice that pretty quickly. Um, chronic pain starts to improve. And then when they look at their blood work, yeah, cholesterol's down, C reactive proteins down, uh, blood pressure has improved. Yeah, all the things you mentioned, you know, just in a very short time in thirty days. And then if they continue it, it

it keeps coming down to a to a point of, you know, optimal health for a lot of people, which is really, really awesome. Uh and for some folks it can be ninety days and some folks it can take a couple years to really resolve something chronic. In fact, I remember talking to um we when we were at that conference, I talked to a woman who had uh it took her two years to fully reverse

was a pretty serious autoimmune condition. It wasn't lupus, but she was working with Dr. Brooke Goldner. And um, it took her two years to reverse it. She started feeling good within a few weeks. But her blood work and her you know, autoimmune numbers didn't resolve for about two years. But she just stayed the course and was able to turn it around. But the fact that she felt so good doing it is what kept her on track. So even

though her blood work

took a while and her body took a while to really sort itself out. Um, you know, having energy and just feeling good and feeling normal again uh propelled her forward. Um and I, you know, I'd like to point out something else too, is like for anybody that's has resistance or whatever, beside the fact that you should just treat it like a personal experiment, you don't have to declare yourself a vegan, you know?

You don't have to become a new thing, right? You don't have to become a vegan or become a vegetarian or get get a tattoo or something. Like you can, you know, people ask, you can just say, I'm I'm I'm doing a dietary experiment. I'm only eating whole plant foods for 30 days to see what'll happen, right? You don't have to be like, I'm a vegan now or whatever, right? If you have resistance to that, it's okay. Like you don't ever have to declare yourself a vegan if you don't want to.

You know, it's not about who you are. It's we're just talking about what you're fueling your body with. And so I know there's some people that have resistance to that. And it's okay. Like you can still be you. You know,

Matthew Lederman (20:40)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Wark (20:41)
you don't have to join a new club or anything. Uh so no

Matthew Lederman (20:44)
D did you get the tattoo? I didn't get the tattoo either.

Chris Wark (20:47)
tattoos. But I but I do have a friend that got a vegan tattoo in high school, and he is not a vegan anymore.

Matthew Lederman (20:54)
Ha ha ha ha.

Chris Wark (20:55)
Yeah, and he has a big vegan tattoo like on his abdomen, you know.

Matthew Lederman (21:00)
He should get the word mostly above the vegan so at least he can still formerly.

Chris Wark (21:02)
Yeah, mostly formerly. I don't even

yeah. I mean, he he could be a vegan now. I don't know. I just remember he got that tattoo in high school and then by college he wasn't anymore. And

Matthew Lederman (21:14)
boy.

Chris Wark (21:14)
it became s you know just sort of a joke, you know. But um anyway, uh okay, so so you you took this, you know, you took took this sort of like you jumped off the conventional path, you started

reading and researching and understanding nutrition. Did did that involve more education? Did you go somewhere else to to to train and learn? Like what what was the next step in your path of becoming a a, you know, di diet and lifestyle practitioner? I don't know what you know what you call yourself exactly, but

Matthew Lederman (21:47)
Yeah, so at that time there was no real path to go on. I reached out to all the people that were practicing, like uh Colin Campbell and Esselstein and um Furman and McDougal, and they

Chris Wark (22:01)
Yeah.

Matthew Lederman (22:02)
were all so warm and welcoming. McDougal sent

Chris Wark (22:04)
And by the way, what year, what era was this?

Matthew Lederman (22:07)
this was two thousand and six, I think. So about twenty years ago. I

Chris Wark (22:13)
Mm-hmm.

Matthew Lederman (22:13)
still have the email actually that I sent out to everybody.

Um, which was fun because he John wrote back, McDougall wrote back, this is great. You know, here I'll send you some DVDs and some information, and you can come up and see me anytime. At that time, I was trying to get I was a hospitalist at Kaiser and wanted to leave. And I said, Is anybody looking to hire ah somebody that would practice this way? I spent time they weren't actually hiring at the time, but I spent time following them around in their different clinics and seeing.

Amazing things happen and reading all the books I could get my hands on and they were always available for questions and seeing how they treated people and worked in nutrition and lifestyle and particularly with John McDougal how he aggressively challenged the conventional medical world and held them to a high standard around absolute risk numbers, which I still do to this day and it's super helpful. Um, but to really hold them accountable to the data.

Chris Wark (23:15)
McDougal

Matthew Lederman (23:15)
The um

Chris Wark (23:16)
was, I mean, he was a savage. Like I he I I one of my it's a trophy interview of mine now. I interviewed him years ago. And I'll link to that, folks, if y'all haven't seen it. I mean, he he was so bullish and so tough and bold. I'm just saying, he was bold. And it's amazing that his career, he had so much longevity, uh, but he just

He did not pull punches when it came to sort of the the fall the the perils and pitfalls of conventional medicine and uh and talking about nutrition and diet and lifestyle changes and how they really could help people uh reverse chronic disease. I mean, he I learned so much from him from watching his lectures and uh and interviews and um, you know, I read the Starch Solution years ago. I mean, what just what a tremendous

Uh force for good. Yeah.

Matthew Lederman (24:16)
Yeah, no, he and

he was so smart. He had all these books and he would be able to tell me as I'm reading these books. I'd be like, I have a question. He's like, go to McDougal's challenging second opinion, page ninety, and it'll be on there. And sure enough, I'd go in there and there was the answer. I mean, the guy had a memory like I've never seen, and as and as strong and sometimes harsh as he was publicly.

It was the opposite with patience behind closed doors. So when I would sit with him with patience, it was like this warm, compassionate, just really caring guy that loved his patience and loved what he did. So it was a real people, not everybody got to see that side of him,

Chris Wark (24:58)
Yeah.

Matthew Lederman (24:59)
but just an amazing, amazing man and did so much for this movement.

Chris Wark (25:05)
Well, I could see and I could f from my vantage point, yeah, I'd never spent time with him personally, but I could see the kindness, you know, that uh that really motivated him. It was, it was uh he had a heart that was compassionate and he really cared about people. And he was such a great teacher. You know, I mean, he would spend so much time teaching and doing you know, these little conferences and lectures and things, and they weren't big money grab.

you know, events. I mean, it was they were really you could tell they were just motivated by his heart to teach and educate and empower other physicians and empower patients and like really get on a healthy path. Like, yeah, well, really we could spend the whole whole interview talking up McDoodle.

Matthew Lederman (25:50)
Yeah. He he

taught me one of the most important things, which I I just did this the other day with a guy with um prostate cancer. And the doctors basically told him, you know, you're middle aged, you're healthy, you're the most one of the you have an intermediate, unfavorable diet, you know, type of prostate cancer. You're you're one of the most likely to benefit from radical prostatectomy or radiation therapy and all this stuff.

And I said, Wow, so this is the best patient out there. And they basically said, um, because they talked about impotence and incontinence from the procedures. And he said the the doctor told him, Well, do you want to be are you either able to have an erection and not incontinent and die? Or are you willing to be alive and impotent and incontinent? So you gave him those were the two choices.

And it was like there was no information. And I so I put together for this guy, I looked the absolute benefit of prostatectomy and radiation therapy in your risk in your profile and preventing a prostate cancer death, which is not even as good as overall mortality. But I looked at 20 and 30 years and I said to this, I said the data shows that if a hundred people got a radical prostatectomy or this, you know, the treatment.

That 15 of them would prevent a prostate cancer death. That means 85 of them would not prevent a prostate cancer death. So I said that if you're trying to pr prevent prostate cancer death, you have an 85 in 100 chance of not doing that with this treatment. And you're the best out, you're the best patient, they said. And then if you look at number needed to treat, which is basically taking that and saying, well, if we treat six people, one will prevent a death. They're like, that's a fantastic.

They call it NNT. That's a fantastic NNT. So this is, you know, we do so many other treatments that have even worse data. Because I was looking and I said, well, that's not a reason to do this. Just because we do things that are even worse than this doesn't mean, but that's what you're dealing with with these doctors. So when I told this patient, is that worth it to you? I will never tell them to get it or not get it. But I'll say, is that worth it to you? There's a 15 in a hundred chance that you prevent a prostate cancer death.

There's an 85 in 100 chance that you don't prevent a prostate cancer death, 100 people, 30 years. And then you decide. That I wouldn't they they don't teach that in in in medicine. They don't teach you to talk to patients. They basically say the guidelines are this. Here's where you fall on the guidelines. It helps. It prevents, it prevents you from dying. Do the procedure. You'd be crazy if you don't. So imagine that's what you're face, but because of John McDougall, he taught me how to look at the data that way.

And present it. Now he went a little further and he would say, Don't do it.

Chris Wark (28:48)
Yeah, yeah, he would. He would say, Don't do it. Yeah, I know.

Matthew Lederman (28:54)
But but to me, you know, that's that that's what's missing. And it takes time to do that, and the guidelines and everything's not set up to help doctors do that. Um now what's even scarier uh is AI is is pushing people. I'm using some AI and to get the data and sometimes to formulate some messages, and they're saying,

Well, this doctor bent the evidence or something. There was talking about me and saying that I misrepresented the data. So I wrote back to the AI, said, are my numbers correct? I said, 15 out of 100. Isn't that means 85 out of 100? And they're, well, your numbers are correct, but you're presenting it in a way that's gonna dissuade them from getting a procedure that's known to save lives. Like, how do you combat that? This is what people are up against. And then they feel ashamed or scared, or their families telling them they have to do

it.

You know, this is what makes it so hard, right? I mean, you've been there. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about, right?

Chris Wark (29:47)
My story was almost just like what you said. I mean, when I sat down with an oncologist for the first time after I had surgery for colon cancer, stage three C, uh, and I was asking him about alternative therapies and nutrition. And I didn't know anything, but I I was just barely learning. You know, I was had just started learning. I just learned about a whole food plant based diet. An all raw diet, you know, it's like I was about a week in to to eating that way.

And, you know, I just happened to say, you know, are there any alternative therapies available? I mean, I didn't I just you know, I didn't know what questions to ask. But yeah, he he he turned on me pretty quick and he said, if you don't do chemo, you're insane.

Right. That was it. I mean, just like what you said. They say you're crazy. They're gonna tell you you're crazy if you don't do this treatment. And and basically with chemo, I had a 60% chance, according to him, of living five years. Now, 60 is better than 15 or out of a hundred or whatever, right? But 60 was still pretty close to 50. Right. And and part of me skeptically thinking, well, you know, that's pretty close to a coin toss, man.

Like I'm it's not inspiring a whole lot of confidence. And um and again, I I don't want to retell my whole story here because my audience knows it, but the point is, is I was really excited about the idea that I could radically change my diet and my life and help myself survive and thrive through cancer. And that was the path I wanted to run down.

You know, it was just yeah, it was scary for sure. But the yeah, I just felt so compelled, like this is the way I've gotta go. Like I I had enthusiasm for it versus the other path was just dread and despair, you know, uh and and felt powerless and hopeless in a way. And you know, it's like you just cross your fingers, we'll see.

Matthew Lederman (31:55)
and if you die when you do the treatment, they say, well, we did our best. If you die when you don't do the treatment, they shame you and say, you should have done the treatment, it would have saved you. So it's

Chris Wark (32:06)
That's right. That's right.

Matthew Lederman (32:08)
it's totally stacked. And oh it's just so and they minimize the side effects and the harms and maximize the benefits. And just to be clear, I was saying

Not 15% chance that you were alive. It was 15 out of 100 people had their life saved because of that, meaning 85 did not have their life saved. So I'm saying if you're doing this to try and save your life, then odds are not for you that this procedure is going to do it. But yet they're talking about you'd be crazy not to. It saves, they'll say true statements. It does save lives.

But they don't put it in terms that you can understand or have the context. So that's what's missing. That's one of the I think the one of the most important services that we offer our patients, that McDougal offered his patients.

Chris Wark (33:06)
Yeah. I yeah, I talk about this in my book. There's four chapters in there that are sort of um expose on uh the medical and pharmaceutical cancer industries, but that that sort of half-truth deceptive language that patients hear, right? It's not a lie, but it's but it doesn't give them the whole truth. And so yeah, it's true to say this this treatment saves lives. Well, how many? Well, 15 out of a hundred. well, wait a second, you know?

That's not that great, right? So you only get the half, you get the first half, right? All the good, none of the bad. That's that's what you hear. And then as you know, it's the the terminology like this treatment's very effective for your type of cancer. The patient hears effective and they think cure. Effective means cure. And the truth

Matthew Lederman (33:52)
Right.

Chris Wark (33:54)
is, effective doesn't mean cure. Effective means tumor shrinkage. That's all it means. Temporary tumor shrinkage is effective. And so a doctor can

ethically say the word effective about a treatment if it's proven to shrink tumors for some little period of time. And uh yeah and the right.

Matthew Lederman (34:16)
Even if it doesn't make you live longer, depending on

the outcome they're measuring, they can say it was effective at doing that. And you if you don't know to ask, you're not gonna know. Yeah.

Chris Wark (34:23)
That's right. It's effective at tumor shrinkage. Not effective

at saving lives or extending life or anything else. It's just effective at tumor shrinkage while you're getting whatever, you know, chemo it is or whatever immunotherapy it is.

Matthew Lederman (34:35)
Same thing with the

metastatic the in fact for this this same study was looking at metastatic disease and they people they'll say true statements and put them next to each other, even though they're it it you can't do that. They'll say, Well, metastatic disease is a sign that you have a worse cancer and that you're more likely to die. Yes. And then they can say, well, this doing this decreased metastases. Yes. But did doing this make you live longer? So this no.

So just because you decrease metastases doesn't mean you're necessarily going to live longer, even though metastases are a bad sign. So that's confusing for patients because this one study showed a 50% reduction in metastases or uh metastatic spread, but no benefit on mortality, meaning it didn't make you live longer, even though it reduced metastases. And then when they say 50%, that's confusing because it went from 10 out of 100 people had metastatic spread to five out of 100 people had metastatic spread.

So granted, 10, 50% less is five, but if only 10 out of 100 were gonna have spread, that means 90 out of 100 weren't gonna have spread. So do you see like this is makes it so confusing out there? And then for them to talk like this is a no-brainer, I just get so confused. But then they start attacking me, which I'm used to now, you know, making making fun of me, saying, Well, who's this guy? What is he's not a specialist?

And it's like, hey, but they never never argue with the data.

Chris Wark (36:05)
Yeah. Can't it it's pretty tough, pretty tough to argue with the data when it's really parsed, you know, when it's really laid out there, you know, i in the cold light of day, you know, and you can see it for what it is. And yeah, of course, doctors, a lot of them don't even know they don't even know the things you're saying are true. Uh, they're just sort of repeating what they're told to tell patients and they don't have that much time with patients.

And so they gotta move them on to the next step in the process. You know, it's just like patient after patient, as you know. So it's like I feel for because they're trapped in the system again that doesn't give them enough time to spend with patients, doesn't train them how to help people heal, doesn't really train them how to interpret studies correctly. And they're just reading the study summary and and uh, you know, this takeaway, or they're getting educated by pharmaceutical reps about drugs. And of course, that is just pure propaganda about how effective drugs are.

It's coming directly from the drug company through a salesperson to the doctor. And then the doctor repeats those bullet points to the patient. You know, it's like, man, this is so bad. But let me just inject if anybody in my listening doesn't know, I have a guide called 20 Questions for Your Oncologist. It's a free download. You can find it on every page of Chris BeatCancer.com. And um if you're a patient or a caregiver, go download the guide. Go through it. It's a one hour audio teaching program with the downloadable

you know, question list and transcript. And if you go through that, it will give you some in some critical, powerful questions to ask your doctor along the exact lines that Matthew and I are talking about right now. So that you get concrete answers about the the type of treatment, how effective it is, how likely it is to cure you. Like these are very important questions that most patients don't even think to ask. They don't know. And

And if you ask the right questions, you'll get answers that'll surprise you, but then also will help you make the best decision for you. Right. And that's that's key because you don't want to say yes to treatments you don't understand. You don't want to be rushed in out of fear. And you really need to know what you're signing up for. Again, the perfect example is like, you know, for prostate cancer for this particular case, 15 out of a hundred people would be.

Their life would be saved by treatment. And the other 85 would not. Yeah. And so you'd want to know that before you say yes. Like, oh, okay. Well, that's not super encouraging. Uh, and so then so I'm curious along these lines. So what do we know about diet and lifestyle for prostate cancer?

Matthew Lederman (38:50)
Right, so a lot of the the stu the doctors will say, Well, there's no study that shows that diet and lifestyle cures cancer or makes you live longer. So you're just gonna do nothing? I don't just because there's not great data, I mean the Ornish study showed changes in PSA and certain types of cancer. If you're more aggressive, that you know, did they w uh exclude those people? But there's very it's very clear that diet affects

health and cancer growth and markers of cancer growth. So yeah, a lot of these studies that say that diet doesn't make a difference also, they don't actually do the diet we're talking about. In fact, one I'm I was just looking at one study where they were looking comparing it to a Mediterranean diet to a low-fat diet, but they actually ate more fat on the low-fat diet than the Mediterranean. And I was like, this is not a low-fat diet, but you're basically saying that

Mediterranean diet is better than a low-fat. You know, so that basically it comes down to the type of diet that you talk about, Chris, and the diet that we talk about. There's not really good data on that. So you can choose to wait for that. But there's not really great data on a lot of the treatments that people are considering, even though the doctors talk like there's great data. They just don't have anything better to offer. So they're

Chris Wark (40:15)
Yeah.

Matthew Lederman (40:16)
giving you what they have.

Chris Wark (40:17)
Well, I love the Ornish study, even though it's limited in scope and it didn't, you know, it doesn't follow patients for years and years, and it doesn't have like an endpoint of, you know, how many people survived cancer or completely healed. But it's it's a really wonderful study because at least it shows that the patients that followed his plant-based diet, exercise and stress reduction program saw their PSAs go down. Like

Matthew Lederman (40:45)
Right.

Chris Wark (40:45)
Like, hey y yeah,

Matthew Lederman (40:45)
Which is like the number one marker for cancer doing poorly, for prostate cancer doing poorly.

Chris Wark (40:51)
right. It's like, hello, at least do that, at least pay attention to that, you know? That's a pretty strong signal that shouldn't be ignored.

Matthew Lederman (40:58)
Yeah. And then the doctors try

to say, Well, we they try to ignore it by saying, Well, he did stress management and exercise, so we don't know if the diet had an effect. So instead of saying, Well, it's all important, they use that to say, We don't think, we don't know what's important, maybe nothing's important. I'm like,

Chris Wark (41:14)
Yeah.

Matthew Lederman (41:15)
how do you conclude that?

Chris Wark (41:17)
I

know. It's such uh it's such bad logic. It's like this reductionist idea that we have to pinpoint the exact thing that helped somebody. And if we don't pinpoint the exact thing that helped them, then they shouldn't do anything. Right. It's like, no, no.

Matthew Lederman (41:33)
Right. It's like is like

which is more important, breathing in or breathing out?

Chris Wark (41:37)
Yeah.

Matthew Lederman (41:38)
You know, it's like it's like what I don't know. There's no study that shows that breathing in is really important. You know, we did they breathe out too, so we can't tell which is more important. It's like it doesn't make any sense. Like eat

Chris Wark (41:49)
Yeah.

Matthew Lederman (41:49)
and stress reduction and exercise, do it all.

Chris Wark (41:52)
It's all good. And again, I know you encourage that. And that's what we encourage in our community too. There's a we've got a long list of diet and lifestyle practices that are beneficial. And we want you to do everything that you can do, you know, without over overloading and overwhelming people. But yeah, we want you to change your diet, eat whole food, plant-based. We want you to get fresh air and sunshine. We want you to exercise every day. We want you to uh make amends and we want you to forgive the people who've hurt you.

Right. We want you to really look at your environment, your home environment, your work environment, you know. Are you living next to a toxic waste dump? You know, are you working in a chemical factory? Like we want you to change everything in your power, like really become an investigator of your life, because there's a lot of things that contribute to cancer and and chronic disease. And if you just put the blinders on and, you know, and sort of like, you know, cover your ears and your eyes and just like, no, put your head in the sand, yeah, you're probably not gonna get better.

But if you start looking around and going, wait a second, what in my life can I change for the better? You know? And you really kind of spread it out on the table. You get, you know, you just kind of get down to brass tacks, like, all right, I gotta be honest with how I'm living. Maybe and this is what I did. I just, I sort of assumed this idea that, you know, maybe this is my fault. Right? Maybe I'm sick because of the decisions I've made leading up to this point.

And if so, I need to really pay attention to my life and I need to start making some changes. And so what can I change for the better? And then I started just reading and learning about natural health and nutrition and diet and lifestyle and all the stuff we're talking about. And I was so empowered by it and encouraged to to make those changes that they were easy for me. I mean, I was highly motivated, right? Because I didn't want to die. Um, but I did it. You know, I made the changes and I can't, I can't pinpoint the one thing that helped me the most.

I have no idea what helped me the most. I just know I'm a regular guy. You know, I took massive action. I changed everything in my life I could. I did every, you know, treatment I could find and afford, which was pretty limited in 2004 and five. Um, but uh, and I took, you know, copious amounts of supplements and herbs. I can't tell you which one helped, if any of them helped. Um, but I had a, I had a my MO was pretty simple, you know.

Which you'll probably find funny, but it was like, look, if if there's little to no risk of harm and there's a potential benefit, I'll do it. Right. I'll eat it, I'll swallow it, I'll drink it, right? It's like that that's I'll that's and I can find it and afford it, right? Those the other criteria. Yeah. It's like, I'll

Matthew Lederman (44:39)
Right, that was the other Yeah.

Chris Wark (44:41)
do it, right? Little to no risk of harm. If this is a natural compound, natural substance, right? Whatever it is, you know, some kind of

Integrative therapy and holistic therapy. I was like, I'll do it. I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna really, really flood my body with nutrition and and do everything in my power to help myself. And so it's gonna be it's you know, when you brought up studies, you know, there aren't a whole lot of great studies. Yeah, it's it's hard to do a study like that. Orange's study is pretty comprehensive. It's diet lifestyle and stress, stress reduction. Like those are three big levers, right? Big levers that apply.

that a person can pull. Um, and then you can build on that. There's so much more you can do, but

Matthew Lederman (45:22)
And to get people to actually do it. I mean, that's what our the 12 week program that we run, it's all about getting it from your head and into your body and creating those new habits so that these the the healing transformation is is inside of you, you hit this momentum and it changes the trajectory of your health. And like you said, you can't there's so many pieces that are important.

Just like there's so many things that probably contributed to you getting the disease in the first place. It's like looking at it, listening to a symphony and trying to tell me which instrument is making it sound good. It's like, I don't know. They're they're all coming together really nicely. Or they're all coming together in a way that's promoting disease. In fact, your ability to say, I had a role in what happened, which means I have a role in my healing.

Is great because I tell people that, and some people get empowered by that, and some people go to shame and say, So you're blaming me for my disease? And I'm like, Well, you can hear it that way, but that's not what I'm trying to say. What I'm trying to say is to no fault of your own, you you you created or and are in an environment that is hospitable to cancer for some reason. You have the power to change your, you can't change your genes.

but you can change the environment within which your genes live.

So you can get up and do something or not. That's your choice. And then if you

Chris Wark (46:59)
Yeah.

Matthew Lederman (46:59)
decide you want to do stuff, what do you do? And then how do we help you do it? Because a lot of people know what to do, but they have a hard time actually doing it.

Chris Wark (47:08)
Victimhood is is so dangerous and it's pervasive in our culture, and in medicine especially. Uh and patients are often told by their doctors like, No, it's nothing you did, right? It's nothing you did. You you know, it's just it's it's maybe genetic or hereditary, or it it just you may it's maybe maybe bad luck, right? And that perpetuates this state of victimhood.

Where the patient is just like, well, I just do what the doctor says and that's that's I'll just have to live with this my the my whole life and you know, just suffer. Um, and maybe they'll come up with a cure at some point. Uh maybe they'll come up with a better drug or a better pill to cure me. And that's uh that's such a hopeless place to be. And and it is interesting that you said uh what you said too, is like the way a patient hears that message and and

I try to communicate it in the same way that you do. It's like, hey, this isn't to blame you or shame you. This is actually good news, right? It's good news that you might have caused your own problem. Because if, and again, I'm not saying you did, just saying let's entertain the possibility that you might have. Okay. That's all you have to do. You just all you all you have to do is say, maybe, right? Maybe I contributed to my problem. And if you're willing to open up that.

Door of possibility in your mind, then it also empowers you to say, maybe I can help myself get well too. If if I was part of the problem, I can be a part of the solution. So that was immediately for me, that's where I went. You know, I never felt guilty or bad or wild in self-pity or anything like that. It was like I was immediately excited that I could, I could do things to help myself. And look, I mean, if

I mean, you can prove this point in so many different ways. But you know, you look at a person who is an alcoholic and they're drinking every day and their their life is a total mess and they can't get to work on time and they lose their job and they crash their car and they get a DUI. It's like we all know if you can get that person to stop drinking, right? Their life's gonna change

Matthew Lederman (49:24)
Yeah.

Chris Wark (49:24)
for the better. Like we know it. So

Matthew Lederman (49:27)
No.

Chris Wark (49:27)
we know their decisions.

ultimately led them down a path that was destructive. And so that's those same kind of decisions translate uh across not only diet, but they translate with relationships, with our daily habits, with exercising or not exercising, all these things. And again, the big levers diet, exercise, stress reduction, man, you get impact pretty quick.

Matthew Lederman (49:58)
Yeah, it works. It works. You like you said, you stop drinking, your body starts to heal. You stop smoking, your body starts to heal. If you're hitting yourself in the hand with a hammer three times a day, and your hand is sore and red, and you go to the doctor and say, My hand is sore and red, what should I do? And they give you pills and creams. But no one ever says, Stop hitting yourself in the hand with a hammer three times a day. That's what we're doing with our meals. Three times a day, we're hitting ourselves in the body.

And no doctor is saying, hey, have you thought about not hitting yourself in the body three times a day with your food? And then and if you stop hitting yourself in the hand with a hammer, your hand starts to heal. So are people shocked by that? No. But we stop hitting ourselves in the body three times a day with our food. They're like, wait a second, this is gonna cause healing. Your body naturally heals. You gotta get out of its way.

Chris Wark (50:51)
It really does, folks. It really does. Um, we've got a few minutes left. I I appreciate your candor, your perspective. I mean, I I love what you're doing. It's so great. it's always fun to talk to someone who's, you know, like minded and finds humor in in the absurd, as we both do. And uh, you know, it's a big mission, you know, trying to help people restore their health and and and find the motivation to do it, right? That's tough too, because y you know, in the beginning of your story, you said something.

you you were talking about, you know, being a doctor and you're telling patients to lose weight and they would gain weight. And and I get the fact that that a lot of doctors probably feel disillusioned because uh th to the point where they don't even what's the point, right? Why don't I not gonna tell them to stop smoking because they're they're not gonna quit. I'm not gonna tell them to quit drinking. They're not gonna quit. I'm not gonna tell them to lose weight. They're gonna they're not gonna lose weight. You know, what's the point? And I think a lot of d doctors get to that get to that

you know, sort of come to that realization that patients aren't going to take their advice, or at least they start to believe it, whether it's true or not, but they see it enough times that they're just like, and so in in the cancer world, it's like we know, you know, if you stop smoking and drinking, your odd your odds of survival go way up. If you lose weight, if you're o overweight or obese, and you get to a healthy body weight, your odds of survival go up. Like,

If you exercise every day, your odds of survival go up. Like these are such and these are strongly correlated. And there's so many patient studies on these things. And this is doing chemo and all the normal treatments, right? that these just a handful of lifestyle changes, not to mention the plant-based diet, which is some there's some great studies on that with breast cancer survival. But um, you know, it's like,

There's there are these it's great evidence, but doctors A either don't know it or or they don't think patients will listen to them and they don't think they'll change. Or or the other flip side is they're smoking, they're drinking, they're taking lots of pills, right? And they feel hypocritical telling patients to stop doing, you know, they're eating a horrible diet, you know. So it's like, hey, I get it, you know, you feel like a hypocrite telling somebody to do something that you're not willing to do.

Matthew Lederman (53:11)
Yeah, that's the challenge is that a lot of doctors are not willing to do what it takes and then they don't tell patients. And that idea that you don't tell a patient that be just because you don't think they're gonna do it. Well, one, you'd be surprised how many people are willing to do something that I didn't think they would do. And two, it's like even if I don't think someone's gonna take antibiotics for their infection, it's still my duty to tell them that antibiotics are gonna cure their infection.

Doesn't matter if I think they're gonna take them or not. So if I bel if diet and lifestyle are going to impact or cure your problem, it's my duty as a doctor to tell you, regardless of whether I think you're gonna do it. So I I hate when doctors say, well, they're not gonna do it anyway, so I don't wanna upset them. Well, you don't well, one, you can say things in a way that won't upset them. And then two,

That's okay if they get upset we can we can empathize with whatever's coming up for them.

Chris Wark (54:11)
Can we talk about stress and cancer?

Matthew Lederman (54:15)
Yeah. This is this could probably be a whole show in itself. Um, but stress and what I call threat physiology, where your body, because your body can either feel safe or threat. Those are like the two physiological states that you go between. And when your body is getting ready to fight a threat, it does different things. And people have heard of maybe sympathetic and parasympathetic or like the fight, flight, freeze.

So you're ready to fight or run away. Um, but that's what you're doing when you're in threat physiology. There's a threat. When you're in safety physiology, that's where your body can rest and sleep and digest and reproduce. So ideally, you're supposed to stay in threat and then go into when when you fight the threat and then you go into safety, and your baseline is safety. But most people today, they experience their environment.

In various forms of threat. And because it's not just physical threats like a wild bear coming up your driveway, there's emotional, spiritual, mental. So if you're thinking about something that you're scared about, or now they've shown that even things like loneliness and lack of meaning and purpose and um isolation, all those things can actually trigger.

The same physiology as physiology as if a bear is coming up your driveway. And when you're in fear, that is the big problem as far as paralyzing your immune system from being able to fight cancer, because your body is not going to worry about cancer when there's a bear coming up your driveway. It's going to say, We'll deal with cancer if we survive this, and we go back into safety physiology. So that's the the simple I'm simplifying it, but in threat physiology.

You it supports cancer's growth and spread. It also supports viral infection. You're not going worry about viruses. Those are like social problems. But bacterial infections, it's going to be good at. So it's going to worry about the bear biting you when you're getting a bacterial infection. So you see how your body can only have enough resources to focus in one area or the other. And ideally, we go into threat physiology quickly and then come out of it quickly.

But now what people are calling stress, which I don't like that that's a very ad vague term. It's more how does your body perceive the environment it's in? And that includes the people around you, the work that you do, the th way you think, which and a lot of that is programmed and and conditioned into you from very young age. So we have to do this whole reprogram. In fact, that's a big part of our 12 week program.

is retraining the nervous system to experience safety in a world where it's used to or it's habitually uh perceiving threat. And when you do that and turn the fear off, you take the brakes off the immune system's ability to fight cancer. And again, I'm simplifying it, but I don't know how's that is that clear at all?

Chris Wark (57:31)
Yes, I love that. That's awesome. And you know, I talk about these things too. It's it's I mean, I love the way you articulated it because fear, worry, stress, anxiety, they suppress immunity. Right. That's the deal. And you you can go real deep on the microbiology of it, which we won't do in this interview, right? There's a there's all the there's a cascade of uh of uh hormonal changes and physiological effects that happen in your body when you're

Under stress, what when we call distress, right? It's not the good stress like going to the gym, it's distress, and a lot of things cause distress, emotionally, mentally, and physically, and uh relationships, environment, all this kind of stuff, the way we think and interpret events around us and and interactions with others, and there's a lot to it, but I love.

so much that that is a a part of your focus with patients. It's not just the physical, hey, let's get you eating healthy and exercise, but like we really need to work on your mental state and your emotional state and get

Matthew Lederman (58:39)
Yeah, we have

we have two people that that's their job. One, they focus on grief and trauma because I I could talk about trauma in a second, but grief, trauma, and suppressed emotion. And another

Chris Wark (58:51)
Mm-hmm.

Matthew Lederman (58:52)
person, their job is to train nervous system regulation in the present moment. So how do you actually 'cause you have to practice ch change you know, to be able to to it's like learning a new instrument. Um, but what's interesting about trauma, this is actually my biggest issue is

this threat physiology. I got the diet. I got the exercise. I got the communication. I got all that stuff down. But I grew up in an environment where there was a lot of chronic unpredictable stressors. So I lived in a vigilant state because I could have gotten I

Chris Wark (59:27)
Lot of instability.

Matthew Lederman (59:28)
yeah, I could have gotten hit. I could have gotten withdrawal, emotional withdrawal, which is still seen as threat, especially as a kid. I could have gotten shamed, which again is going to be experienced as threat.

I I forgot things. I had a little bit of probably ADHD or something. So I stayed vigilant was my coping strategy. So the absence of vigilance and tension almost felt dangerous to me. Now you can imagine the absence of vigilance when we know that vigilance is basically a fear-based state. So I'm in this weird situation where having tension I know is and vigilance is not health promoting.

But the absence because of my old conditioning, the absence of tension and vigilance feels unsafe because of the old programming. So I've had to do a lot of work around that, which is much more complicated and challenging for me at least than changing my diet. But that's also my my work to do right now. And I find that a lot of people have experienced trauma and other conditionings that need support right now.

Because it's causing their system to be mobilized in that threat physiology. So that's why, and I'm glad that you bring it up, um, because it's it's people talk generally about stress and you gotta reduce stress, which actually can cause more stress when you tell people you gotta reduce your stress. You know, so there's really right, but do you see what I'm saying? Like there's

Chris Wark (1:00:57)
Yeah, 'cause you're stressed about your stress. Yes.

Matthew Lederman (1:01:01)
so I think some people understand this and go into it in a way that I align with, and some people are like,

Well, just do, you know, do some breathing exercises and they teach them a breathing exercise. And I'm like, that's like telling someone who sees the bear coming up or the plane is crashing, you know, going is nose diving to the ground, like, well, do some breathing exercises. But if you still, if your environment still feels like there's a bear coming up the driveway or the nose of the plane is pointed down, you can do all the breathing exercises in the world. We still have to figure out how to shift and transform your environment and more importantly, your experience of your environment.

Chris Wark (1:01:36)
Yeah, the way you perceive it, interpret it. It

Matthew Lederman (1:01:39)
Yes.

Chris Wark (1:01:40)
you know what you kind of reminded me of this sort of um a pa I guess you'd maybe call it a pattern, but for some folks where you're at a in a season of your life where there's no problems, but you are you you sh and you should be at peace because you don't have any problems, right? But you're not.

You're constantly sort of on edge 'cause you're anticipating that a problem is coming. So you can't even enjoy a problem free season. Right. Yeah.

Matthew Lederman (1:02:16)
Yes, exactly. You get it. You get it. Like if I have

and and in fact if I have time, I was just telling Alona, my wife about this this morning, that I have more space in my schedule now. But instead of just going out for a walk and enjoying the birds singing, I'm thinking about, well, what if I do this and I gotta do this and maybe I should do this project and and it's like I can't stop that. That causes more stress. But to just start to notice

To notice those thoughts and those reactions to space, or like when you like what you just said, to notice that wait a second, I don't have problems and I'm unable to be at peace in this moment, like the first step is just being aware of it the way you're talking about it. And that actually can bring a lot of peace in and of itself.

Chris Wark (1:03:05)
Yeah, right. Catching the thoughts or like acknowledging, being aware of what you're thinking and feeling, you know, because a lot of times we're just on autopilot. We th we just get in a habit of thinking negatively or critically or fearfully and dwelling on anxious, you know, ang anxiety producing thoughts, worrying about the future, ruminating on the past, regrets, right, guilt and all this. And uh yeah, and but as soon as you catch yourself doing it, it's like, why am I, why am I like

Why am I spending so much time thinking about this person that annoys me? Right? Why, why am I wasting any energy at all? Like this is this is dumb. You know, why am I doing this? I I can, I just need to stop doing it, right? Or why am I worried about this? Like I can't do anything today to change the future, like this particular scenario. There's nothing I can do to impact that because it's it's other people. It's this the the decisions that other people make, I can't control.

Like, why am I worried about the decisions other people are going to make? You know, if they make a decision that affects me in the future, I'll deal with it. But right now, like I don't need to. So I, yeah. So on my in my my good days and my good moments, I can like catch myself on those thoughts and like reason right with myself and and talk myself out of the irrational, uh, you know, catastrophizing and worry and anxiety. And frankly, cancer taught me how to do that.

Because, you know, it's a you're in a s really, you're in a pressure cooker of fear and anxiety when you're

Matthew Lederman (1:04:42)
Yes.

Chris Wark (1:04:42)
diagnosed, in the especially in the early days, months, you know. And I learned how to be happy and thankful and as a believer, just to say thank you, God, for the good things in my life, despite the bad.

And that was just transformative for me, just practicing gratitude and focusing on the blessings of my life and the good things of my life when when I could easily focus on this terrible diagnosis and the fear that comes with it and the anxiety and the what ifs, right? Um, and even the pain, the physical pain of of suffering. Uh yeah, I so I'm thankful. My cancer taught me so many taught me so many lessons, but one of those big lessons was that I could.

I learned how to be happy in one of the difficult, most difficult seasons of my life. And I I learned how to be joyful and at peace and trust God in the process and and just to to practice gratitude. And um, you know, I had a wife who loved me, had a little baby girl on the way, and you know, we had a home and and cars that ran, you know, right? Enough money to

Matthew Lederman (1:05:50)
Yeah.

Chris Wark (1:05:52)
to pay our bills, you know, and and just day by day it was like.

I have I have a lot to be thankful for. I need to just remind myself of all the good things in my life. And that was such a powerful antidote to the the misery and the fear and the anxiety and the worry and all that stuff that that I was struggling with. And so anyway

Matthew Lederman (1:06:13)
Yeah, that's so

that's so powerful to be able to do that. Cause we'll talk about you can either change your circumstances or you can change your relationship to your circumstances. But those are basically your options. And a lot of people, especially with cancer, the f there's sort of three we have three prongs. We have getting clarity in the chaos. Like you said, that beginning, just getting all those balls.

organized so it doesn't feel like they're all dropping or you're juggling a thousand balls and and get some direction. The next is to make your body as inhospitable to cancer as possible. But the third I think is the most important, which is transforming. And this happens usually around uh six weeks, six to eight weeks into our 12 weeks, where they start to transform from focusing on how to beat the cancer, how to beat the disease to how do you want to live?

Why what makes you feel alive and what do you want to go after instead of what you don't want to happen? And that is super powerful. I think it's essential for healing, but it's also usually a good sign when we see people start to naturally hit that that third prong. I don't know. What are your thoughts on that piece?

Chris Wark (1:07:31)
Hundred percent. Yeah. It it it the way I talk about it is that there's a shift from a patient focusing on not dying to actually living. Right.

Matthew Lederman (1:07:43)
Seven, yeah.

Chris Wark (1:07:44)
But in the beginning it's all about how do I not die? You know, and but you know, as they get more information and get a plan and they become encouraged and they just things start shifting, they start, you know, there's this this cancer's a massive reset.

It's a massive perspective reset, you know? And as that reset sort of matriculates through a person's life, yeah. They and they start to see a light at the at the end of the tunnel and they start to get hope. It's like, yeah. And then they realize, you know, I can just sit here and focus on not dying and think about when am I gonna die and how and and try not to die, or I can like really maximize my joy and like really enjoy my life because I could die in a

car crash tomorrow, not even of cancer, you know. And so w maybe I should try to have joy in my life and do things I want to do and, you know, make peace with people that I'm at odds with and, you know, and just like get busy living.

Matthew Lederman (1:08:46)
Yes. Yes. The missing piece of lifestyle medicine is often the life. You know, it's like how do I how do I live? How do I get that aliveness? What's gonna get me jumping out of bed in the morning? Why am I getting up in the morning and what's gonna get me excited to do so? And a lot of people can't answer that question.

Chris Wark (1:09:06)
Well, hopefully we can help them find the answer, right? Find the purpose,

Matthew Lederman (1:09:09)
Yes. Exactly. Exactly.

Chris Wark (1:09:13)
find the meaning, be encouraged and find hope and and resources and tools to to take control of their life and their health. Um, yeah, Dr. Matthew Letterman, I I appreciate you so much, man. I'm just thankful for you. And uh you're just doing great work. You know, I love your attitude, I love your wisdom.

Um you just uh yeah, you're on the front lines and I just as a patient, I am so thankful for you for what you're doing. Even though you you haven't worked with me personally, I just I just can tell that you're um, you know, you really are a heart-centered uh person and a practitioner that wants to see people thrive, you know, not just survive, but thrive through cancer, thrive through chronic disease, overcome it.

experience, you know, restoration of their health and uh and not just physical body health, but you know, helping them really understand the emotional impact, you know, and uh physical impact of stress, like all those things, man, so great. So great. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview. I want to make sure people know how to how where to find you online, how to connect with you, how to work with you if they're if they're drawn and compelled to to reach out. So

What are all the links?

Matthew Lederman (1:10:33)
Yeah.

Yeah. So you can our website is Connection Docs, which is D O C S dot com, Connection Docs dot com. And there you can get a lot of free resources. We make a lot of stuff available for free. There's a way to join us regularly for the ask me anything. If you have questions, we'll meet live with people in this in this group. So we make lots of ways to access us. We also do our twelve week program. We have an online digital program. ah

which is about making your body inhospitable to cancer and how to navigate cancer specifically. And then uh just um just go to our uh Instagram if you want. It's theconnectiondocs.com. But you can get all that on our website. So basically look for connectiondocs.com and then spread out from there. Happy to help people and it's a pleasure, Chris, to know people like you and who had the courage

To do what felt right in your body, um, and then to let that lead you. And that's that's the biggest gift you can give yourself. And I'm so happy that it paid off for you. Um, just a real pleasure to get to know you and to see the work that you're doing. And I laughed because I for some reason I treat your name like Beats Cancer is your last name. So I'll be like, I'm gonna talk

Chris Wark (1:11:56)
Yeah.

Matthew Lederman (1:11:56)
to Chris Beats Cancer. And I was like,

I was like, I wonder if other people do that. Do they they t they refer to you as Chris Beat cancer? You're like, no, my last name is Wark. It's not not Pete

Chris Wark (1:12:01)
Yeah. For sure, for sure. They do. And uh yeah, people say, Are you crisp are you crispy cancer? And of

course, if they're just hearing about me from someone else, they think it's crispy cancer. Yeah. Crispy

Matthew Lederman (1:12:16)
crispy kids.

Chris Wark (1:12:18)
cancer, which I also own that dot com, by the way. Yeah,

Matthew Lederman (1:12:21)
you do? Oh that's so funny.

Chris Wark (1:12:23)
it redirects. Yeah. Somebody types in crispy cancer, they'll they'll find me.

Matthew Lederman (1:12:27)
Like we can't

we can't find you at Crispy Cancer

Chris Wark (1:12:30)
Yeah, yeah.

A buddy of mine warned me that would happen when I first started. He said, P people might think y you're you're saying it's crispy cancer. I was like, We'll see. He was right. Yeah.

Matthew Lederman (1:12:40)
He was right. He was right.

Well anyway, so that's f I always laugh when I'm like, this is I'm gonna talk to Chris Beat Cancer.

Chris Wark (1:12:45)
Yeah.

Yep. Well, hey, what a thrill. I so glad to connect. I'm glad thank you for you know, thank you for initiating uh for coming up and and saying hello and at the conference and um you know, chatting with me and and and introducing yourself and and I'm just so glad we connected. Uh and uh I'm excited to share you and your resources um with my community. And uh yeah, I mean, we're both on the same team, same mission, just trying to help people and encourage them and

Empower them and uh get get them out of victimhood and and show them that healing is possible. That's really where it all starts, folks. It starts with one thing, and that's the belief that healing is possible. And I can tell you it is possible because I know so many people, and so does Dr. Lederman who have healed against the odds. And so these are not superheroes.

They're not special people. They're regular people who are willing to change their life. They're willing to change what they eat. They're willing to change how they think, how they act and react. They're willing to exercise. They're willing to forgive. That's all it takes, right? You just have to be willing to change. So again, we'll put links to connect with Dr. Letterman and his team ah in the show notes, uh, on below the video on YouTube, on the blog post on chrisbeatcancer.com.

And uh yeah, thanks again for watching and thank you for your time, Dr. Matthew Letterman.

Matthew Lederman (1:14:18)
Thank you.