Latest / Intellectual Medicine / Can You Really Starve Cancer? The Truth About Nutrition, Fasting, and Prostate Health

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Can You Really Starve Cancer? The Truth About Nutrition, Fasting, and Prostate Health · Intellectual Medicine

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The question arises, can you starve cancer with nutritional
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modification? The short answer is no, you
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cannot do that. Cancer will find a way to
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nourish itself even if you don't eat any food.
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Now, the bigger question is how does nutrition affect your
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immune system and are the things you can do nutritionally that
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will make your body inhospitable toward cancer, specifically
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toward prostate cancer or really cancer in general?
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Now, this notion of starving cancer is very popular and very
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appealing. I get it.
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Cancer loves to live on sugar. Therefore, if you don't eat
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sugar, the cancer can't thrive. The problem is your body lives
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on sugar, your brain needs it, and even if you never eat sugar,
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the liver will make it. Now, there's a rational basis
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for modifying simple carbohydrate and junk food, but
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the point is not to take it to an extreme and go through
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fasting and go through juicing. There's so much misinformation,
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but but this, this is the caveat.
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What a person believes in has power.
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And although there's little to no science supporting juicing
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and supporting intermittent fasting regarding cancer
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outcomes, It's not to say that an individual can't benefit if
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they truly believe that's going to help them.
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But my message is really one of living abundantly.
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I'm not going to put myself, nor will I suggest that you go
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through any kind of hardship or misery unless it has clear,
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distinct benefit. So let's come back to the whole
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nutrition thing, although I do not advocate fasting because I
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don't believe it has any value in any realm of human health.
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Intermittent fasting. Yeah, I do that.
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You know what I call it? Sleeping.
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It's a natural pattern. We have to eat frequently
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because we have a big brain and a little stomach, and the brain
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burns energy and stress to the human body is not a good thing
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to do. And stress comes from
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nutritional deprivation. The idea that you can somehow
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improve your health through this fasting pattern, I think is kind
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of silly. But if you enjoy fasting, that's
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a different thing. Some people will tell me they
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have better mental clarity, they feel less blood, they feel
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better, right? I'm not going to dispute that.
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I'm talking about you out there who's like, loathing the notion
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but doing it because you think you'll live longer, right?
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Scratch that idea. Here's one thing for sure.
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Stress is cancer's elixir. Cancer thrives in a stressed
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environment because your immune system dips in.
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What can stress you worry? What can stress you misery.
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So I had a patient once, he was a stage 4 cancer and metastatic
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lung cancer. Very difficult position to be
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in. And he had read something that
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advocated organic juicing like 5 times a day.
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He said Dockham spent him a whole day finding enough organic
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vegetables to make juice out of it.
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But right, it was stressing him. Not good.
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So if you like to fast for spiritual or for mental health
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or for personal reasons, then have at it.
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But the question for the rest of us is where should the focus be?
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Should I fast, should I be a vegetarian?
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Should I eat organic? Should Well, the most important
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variable that over overwhelms every other aspect is your
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percent of body fat. The fat on your body contributes
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to cancer risk that's irrefutable.
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The evidence is powerful not only prostate, but every other
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cancer. So when you're fighting cancer,
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do not think of starving it in a manner that alters the way you
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might eat, other than eating in a manner to shrink fat.
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I'll give you some tips on that and you could take this to the
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bank. I've been doing weight loss
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medicine for 30 years. When I was in the army, I was in
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charge of the Fat Boy Clinic. That's what they called it when
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the soldiers would come to me and I would have to evaluate
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them metabolically, which meant squeeze a thyroid gland, little
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blood work, and if they can't lose weight, then they're
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drilled out of the army. What a stupid idea, these Husky,
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strong, vigorous soldiers, all because they carried extra
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weight. That's when I began to realize
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this is not a function of intellect or willpower and
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metabolic dynamics within. So here are the principles you
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need to follow if you want to shrink fat.
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You cannot eat just because of hunger.
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Hunger is a simple stimulus from the primitive brain to the
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frontal lobe telling your body that it wants something.
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It's bored, it wants sex, it wants entertainment, it wants
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stress reduction. All come to the frontal lobe,
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the intellectual part of your brain, as hunger.
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It does not mean that you need fuel for the machine #2 there's
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no off button. When you start to eat, you
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don't. Do not eat until you get full.
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Hey, there's a hole at the top and a hole at the bottom.
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You're not filling anything, folks.
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You get temporarily uncomfortable, so you can't
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trust your sensation to guide volume of food, and you can't
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trust your sense of hunger. And you must eat at times when
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you're not hungry to prevent rebound hunger, to prevent
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rebound fat accumulation. So here's how that works.
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There's a hormone called ghrelin that's in your stomach and it
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communicates with your brain. It tells the brain, right, how
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much food is down there. If there's no food down there,
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the amount of ghrelin increases. Now here you are at work.
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You're busy, you're thinking you're doing stuff.
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Your frontal lobe is on fire. The ghrelin level goes up, but
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you don't register the sensation because the frontal lobe blocks
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it. Then you get home.
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You haven't eaten, maybe since breakfast.
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You've been too busy. You walk through the door and
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Wham, it hits you like a tidal wave.
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Starvation. That ghrelin level is screaming.
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So you eat something. Problem Hunger doesn't go away.
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There's a 30 minute lag between what you eat and how it
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registers in the brain neurochemically.
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So we've got a problem because the remedy for your hunger is
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not to eat more, it is to eat consistently.
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Look, a prize thoroughbred is not fed when it appears to be
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stressed and hungry. It is fed on a schedule.
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Most of you who have pets feed on a schedule.
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If you fed your dog around the clock, it would get fat.
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It would eat the food you offer it.
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We're unfortunate in that we can reach the refrigerator of the
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cabinet. We can feed ourselves whenever
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we want. So pick a feeding time at least
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three per day, right? I've never seen anybody in my
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practice consistently lose fat and gain muscle when they're
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eating less than three times a day.
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Losing weight is not the goal, folks.
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It's losing fat percent body fat.
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If you can get to a body analyzer, that's great, at least
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three times a day. Protein centric.
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Now, I've also heard people talk about meat Doc, I'm going to go
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vegetarian. I'm going to go vegan because
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meat is evil. It's nonsense.
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What happens in these dietary extremes is they take a detail
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of chemical or nutritional detail and blow it up to a whole
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story. So in meat there is an amino
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acid called methionine. It's an essential amino acid for
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human health. In excess, methionine has a
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potential to be an accelerant to cancer cells, cause cancer cells
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like methionine, just like your cells.
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So the art of the game, folks, is to make it difficult for
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cancer to thrive by shrinking your fat in a manner that hold,
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that sustains your own health and immune function and an
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Amanda that holds on your muscle mass, which is super critical.
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Three feeding times or more per day.
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There's no such thing as a healthy snack.
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That's an oxymoron. If you want to shrink fat, you
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must not eat except for predetermined feeding times that
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you will establish and you'll eat by the clock.
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Healthy snack? No such thing.
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Well, what about this idea that you should eat antioxidant foods
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with polyphenols and blueberries?
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And these good foods? Foods are not good or bad,
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right? They're like a force of nature.
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They're like water, like rain. Is it good or bad?
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It depends on volume on timing correct?
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So the same thing that is an antioxidant at volume X can be
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pro oxidative at volume 3X goes like this.
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When you eat you must create inflammation to digest the food
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100%. When you eat, you instigate
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mtor, which is a natural occurring product the body makes
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to help accelerate cellular digestion and proliferation.
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If you eat a lot, you create a lot of inflammation and a lot of
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mtor. Neither of those things are good
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when you're fighting cancer. Shoot, neither of those things
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are good in general, but we've been bred in America to believe
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that a portion is double size. I went out to a restaurant the
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other night. The steak on the menu was 12
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ounces. 12 ounces. That's like 3 meals folks.
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A four ounce steak, that's about 30 grams of protein.
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So knowing that, I always cut my entrees in half when I go to a
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restaurant, A little bit frugal. I like getting 2 meals for one
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price or I'll split them with my wife.
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I advise you to follow this pathway.
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Shrink the fat. Don't stress about fasting.
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Don't stress about avoiding any particular food category.
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I'm talking food, not junk, right?
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How about artificial sweeteners? They've not been shown to help
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you lose weight. I recommend against them.
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Now, sometimes an artificial sweetener may be a component of
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a protein shake or some other type of meal replacement, and
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small amounts probably tolerable.
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Should you fast intermittently? You can, but you don't have to.
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Should you be vegetarian? You can, but you don't have to.
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Stress is the key ingredient, right?
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To live life abundantly means also living life with joy, with
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hedonism. Can you drink alcohol?
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Alcohol is a poison. Isn't it bad if it gives you
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pleasure? Now I'm talking about getting
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drunk pleasure. I'm talking about a cocktail in
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the evening, a glass of wine with dinner, an occasional can
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of beer. It's not going to inflamed your
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cancer when you enjoy yourself, when you're hay, when you're
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having pleasure. This is critical to your immune
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function. It's not really optional.
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I hate to be corny, but the old left left laughter is the best
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medicine. Some truth to that.
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So living harmoniously, living joyfully, your day should not be
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walked underneath a shadow of cancer fear.
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Oh my goodness, if I have a glass of wine, my cancer is
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going to blow up. Oh my goodness, if I have an
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occasional croissant, I'm going to ignite a flame of malignancy.
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Neither are true. It's more the habitual pattern.
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It's more that percent body fat can't get around it.
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It is a powerful determinant. So make that your priority.
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Don't worry about starving cancer now.
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There are some things that are really worth adding into your
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eating pattern. I do not advocate juicing, Not
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at all. When you juice, you concentrate
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sugar. When you juice, you destroy
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fiber. When you juice, you enhance the
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volume of sugar over what you would have by virtue of eating
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the vegetables themselves. If you like juice, make it
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recreational, but do not think it has intrinsic health benefit,
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because it doesn't. A glass of orange juice has as
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much sugar as a can of Coca-Cola and is fattening.
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Now if you are lean to begin with or if you just love orange
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juice, I suppose you could have a little.
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Not going to harm you. Volume is the key.
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So when it comes to foods that are worth eating, prostate
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cancer does not like tomatoes. Lycopene, the ingredient one of
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the components of tomatoes, has been shown to have activity
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against prostate cancer. I recommend that you have 3
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servings of tomatoes every week, by the way.
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That's probably far superior than any lycopene supplement you
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can get, because there are other things in that tomato that may
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have value. The more dark, the redder, the
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deeper the tomato, the more lycopene.
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So a plum tomato, cherry tomato, really high in lycopene.
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Now, can you have it more than three times a week?
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Yes. No harm in that.
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But three times a week is what I'd recommend.
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Broccoli, cruciferous vegetables.
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Fabulous. Half a cup, three times a week,
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unless you hate broccoli. Remember the joy principle,
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folks. That's real.
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If you choke down broccoli because you think it's good for
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you, it's probably going to do you harm because of the stress
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of choking it down. Tomato broccoli green tea can't
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go wrong unless again, you hate it.
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But green tea 3 servings a day has elements in it.
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EGCG, catechins and other elements that have been shown to
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be supportive of immune function.
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It correlates with lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol.
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It correlates with weight reduction.
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So green tea is fantastic. Three times a day.
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Have at it. How about olive oil?
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Put that in the good column. Olive oils got some antioxidant
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polyphenols, so it's a nice oil to use.
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Look, when you're in doubt about which oil to use, you can't go
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wrong with olive oil unless you hate it.
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But it's as far as a nutrition source, as far as a safety
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parameter, it's a number one. Are the seed oils bad for you?
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It's it's uncertain, right? They're they may be.
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I don't think they're the worst thing on the planet, but I do
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know that olive oil is irrefutably meritorious.
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Coconut oil is right up there as well, so you can use those
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pretty confidently. How about fish?
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Salmon, in particular fatty fish, been shown to have some
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merit. Interesting to me was the
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research I did comparing farmed salmon to wild caught.
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Now farm salmon is controversial environmentally.
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I get that. I'm strictly talking about its
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nutritional content. A university in Canada looked at
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farm versus wild caught and they found there was no difference in
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the nutritional makeup. They also found that the wild
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caught salmon had as much, if not a little more toxins in it
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than the farm caught. Now, if you're against farm
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salmon for environmental purposes, socioeconomic
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purposes, I'm on board. However, a rice differential?
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Yikes. Wild caught salmon is a fortune
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O for my money. I eat salmon that is most likely
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farmed because I get it at restaurants.
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So don't fret people. Don't worry about starving
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cancer by doing nutritional gymnastics to try to avoid
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things that are going to blow it up.
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It's not that much of A consequential variable that you
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can't enjoy yourself. But do pursue durable
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nutritional change to shrink fat.
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Do not go on crash diets, they always fail. 100% rebound.
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Whatever you do in your nutritional modification should
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be the way you're going to live going forward.
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Nutritional incrementalism. You establish a plan on one day
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of the week. How many feeding times?
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I recommend you start with four, and I recommend the first one
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happen within an hour of getting up.
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And a meal in this world does not need to be a plate full of
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varied foods. It can be literally a protein
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shake. It can be a four ounce serving
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of steak or chicken. It does not need to be a meal.
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Variety is not essential to your nutritional health.
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Volume is the key elements and consistency.
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And if you can pull that off, you're going to do OK.
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I'm looking at the clock because my next feeding time's in about
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another hour or two. I'm very methodical and I
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encourage you to pursue that as well.
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So enjoy your food, enjoy socialization on occasion, enjoy
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a dessert even, but don't make it a habit.
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If you choose to drink adult beverages or alcohol, enjoy
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them. But volume control, maybe an
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ounce, no more than two per serving.
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You're in charge of that. But don't be fearful of eating
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meat and don't feel obliged to be vegetarian or to do fasting.
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You can do this healthfully. Foods to add I mentioned a few
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one to consider garlic. So garlic is and immunologic
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support problem I have is kind of smells bad and I guess I
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guess that goes to the stress piece.
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Then you read about things like like bitter leaf.
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There are some things that are just not practical to acquire
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and therefore I don't factor them into the equation.
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Can you get turmeric into your diet?
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Might that help? It might.
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It's got anti oxidative quality but I don't know too many
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turmeric recipes and I'm not going to go buy it and sprinkle
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it on my food. So you get some choices gang.
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Live life joyfully. Choose your thought.
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Choose how you're going to eat. Establish feeding times.
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Get a food scale. Measure volume.
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My recommendation is the protein portion, the meat portion.
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Be not greater than 4 oz, maybe 5 if you're a big person.
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I know it's not much, but that's the volume that will correlate
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with your best health. The most dangerous food to eat
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is too much. The best thing you could do with
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food is to reduce portion size but not eliminate food
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altogether, not do it via fasting.
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The American plate has become gargantuan.
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You don't need to eat that way. You're fighting a different
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battle now, right? What you used to do yesterday,
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you don't quite get away with today, not with clear
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conscience. Whatever happens next, you know,
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you want to play your best card when it comes to nutrition,
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physical activity, when it comes to, well, I mean, obviously
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you're not going to smoke alcohol.
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We talked about modesty is OK. We'll talk about other elements,
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you know, supplements, repurposed drugs.
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You put it all together, you're creating an environment that is
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very inhospitable toward cancer of the prostate and cancer in
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general. You know, when they tracked men
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who had prostate cancer, over 200 of them, they followed them
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unto their death. Over 200 men who had diagnosed
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prostate cancer died. Only about 25 of them died from
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metastatic prostate cancer. The rest, heart disease, was
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number one. Other forms of cancer were #2 so
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this environment you're creating, it's got benefit to
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you beyond prostate cancer. The common denominator?
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It will help with all cancers. And heart disease so you get to
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live your most vital life. We're here, folks.
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We're here to have a good time. We're here to enjoy life.
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We're not here to be miserable. And if doing something makes you
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miserable, it's likely amplifying your risk of cancer
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progressing. So eat smart, eat happy, embrace
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hedonism. And if you choose to do
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something because you like it, I'll never object to that.
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Even if it is fasting, even if it is vegan dieting.
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No objection. But it has to do with how you
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want to live. That's where we draw the line.
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All right, team, until next time.
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Thanks for spending time with me.