In November 2016, I was very kindly invited to speak at a conference in London called “Charging down the wrong path: Is cancer a metabolic, epigenetic disease?”, organised by Yes2Life. I’d been in touch with Robin Daly, founder and chairman of this wonderful charity, for a good few years. Speaking in the UK for the very first time meant a lot to me!
What is Yes2Life?
Yes2Life is a very proactive charity in the field of integrative therapies for cancer patients. It is totally independent of commercial agendas and completely focused on cancer patients. The work that is done to change attitudes and make integrative therapies more available, accessible and also affordable for everybody is truly impressive.
Robin Daly also runs a highly informative radio show on UK Health Radio– have a look at the topics presented there. All of them are very relevant for cancer patients.
Meet the experts
It was wonderful to meet so many like-minded people, new and old colleagues and learn from some highly renowned speakers. For an overview of what happened on the day, I invite you to check out this blog post. Here’s a list of the speakers:
- Paul Davies, Principal Investigator in the center for the Convergence of Physical Science and Cancer Biology at Arizona State University.
- Travis Christofferson, author of the bestselling book “Tripping over the Truth“.
- Robert Verkerk, founder of the Alliance for Natural Health International (ANH-Intl), a non-governmental organisation dedicated to promoting natural approaches to healthcare and shaping scientific and regulatory framework affecting such approaches.
- Dr Ndaba Mazibuko, a Clinical Research Fellow in Clinical Neuroscience. His work includes clinical trial design, management and data analysis with respect to pharmacological and neuro-imaging studies in both the academic and industry sectors.
- Jane McLelland, physiotherapist and cancer survivor with an amazing story on the use of off-label drugs (I’ll be writing about this soon)- stage 4 cervical cancer in 1999 and you should see how gorgeous and full of vitality she looks now!
- And myself…
Watch my presentation
And you get to listen and watch the talk I presented in London in its entirety! Often when I write a new talk, I practise it at home once or twice while recording myself. You get to benefit from this now. If you want to listen to certain topics only, scroll down and below the video, you see what time of the presentation I discuss them. Enjoy!
00.00 Introduction
01.00 My story
01.50 Overview
02.30 Where we stand
05.00 What is the ketogenic diet?
07.45 What happens with insulin?
08.15 Rationale for the ketogenic diet
08.32 Gluconeogenesis
09.08 Nutritional ketosis
09.37 Nutritional ketosis vs. fat adaptation
10.21 Metabolic flexibility
10.50 Ketoacidosis
11.28 Preferred fuels
13.08 Where to start
14.35 Absolute contraindications
15.27 Relative contraindications
16.10 Initial assessment
18.25 Blood tests (baseline and ongoing)
20.00 What are ketones?
21.26 Glucose/Ketone Index (GKI)
22.20 Acetoacetate measurement
23.45 Acetone and Ketonix
24.50 Clinical observations
26.44 Blood glucose
28.15 Stubborn blood glucose
30.15 Stumbling blocks
32.00 Misconceptions
32.50 The Ketogenic Kitchen
33.50 Where to find me