Nutrition Videos

Hi! I'm Stelios Pantazis. I'm a doctor and I specialize in medical nutrition and metabolic disorders. Today's video has been added to our regular schedule, because I want to share something that happened to me at my office a few weeks ago. I've changed many things in the story, to make it unidentifiable, but its essence has remained unchanged. I had an appointment with a 55-year-old man. Let's call him Dimitris. Dimitris called me on the phone and complained that all his relatives have either died of cancer or have suffered from cancer, so he's really afraid and concerned that he may suffer from cancer too. Dimitris wanted to ask for my help as an expert in medical nutrition, so that he could get advice in order to significantly reduce the risk of cancer. On the phone, he sounded really distraught and stressed, so I changed my schedule, in order to see him as soon as possible. When Dimitris came to the appointment, we sat down and talked, and he told me that he was really confused by what he'd been reading on the internet, and since he trusted me, he wanted to ask me some things about cancer, so that I could help him and guide him. I told him that I would be glad to help him, and we started talking. In the beginning, he told me that he was seriously thinking about intermittent fasting. But he wasn't sure if the appropriate protocol for cancer prevention was the 20-4 or 16-8 protocol. He told me that from what he'd read on the internet, some say that 20-4 is better, while others say that 16-8 is better. I answered that there are no extensive studies on humans yet, so that we can determine which of the two protocols was better. In order to understand which is better, we are based on the results that we see in guinea pigs. However, the guinea pigs' metabolism is very different from ours, because if a guinea pig, for example, a mouse, eats nothing for 24 hours, it may die. The average person can easily eat nothing for 2 or even 3 months. Therefore, it's hard to tell, based on the results we have from mice, which the best protocol for us is. Then, he asked me about blackberries and kiwis. Again, the information on the internet is contradictory. Some sites say that blackberries have a stronger anticancer effect than kiwis, while another site says that kiwis have a stronger anticancer effect. I explained that these results are based on experiments carried out on cancers that have been cultivated in bottles, not in real humans. This is why we can't be certain which of them has stronger anticancer effect in us. In any case, both are very useful and should be included in our diet, if we want to protect our health specifically from cancer. Then, he asked me about flax. He told me that he'd read on many sites that we shouldn't buy ground flax, but we should grind it ourselves, just before we consume it. On the contrary, in my videos, he'd heard that it doesn't really matter if the flax is freshly ground, so we can buy ground flax, store it and consume it within some weeks. He was wondering if this was the right way. I explained what I've said about flax many times in the comments below the videos, that the consumption of freshly ground flax is ideal, but it's not really bad if it's not freshly ground. Besides, the strongest anticancer effect of flax comes from the fibers, which are not destroyed by temperature, grinding or storage. Therefore, the anticancer effect we miss when we use previously ground flax is very little compared to the great benefit of flax. We spent a lot of time on these things, so it was time I asked some things too. After I asked him if he would like to tell me his history, we agreed and started to discuss it. First, I asked him the most important thing. "Do you smoke?" His answer troubled me. "I do, but not much. "Most of the days, I don't smoke more than a packet. "Sometimes on the weekends, if I go out, I smoke a bit more." I took the chance and asked him "You said that you go out. Do you drink alcohol?" "Not every day. "Only when I go out, two or three times a week. "But I usually drink more than a glass. "I don't get wasted, but you know, with my friends..." "I see," I thought. Then, I asked him "Your weight is rather increased. Have you thought about doing something about that?" "It's not very increased," he replied. "It's just the tummy." "I see," I thought. I went on. "Do you exercise? Do you do any activity involving movement every day?" "It's impossible to exercise," he answered. "I have very little time. My job is really demanding." "I see." You've understood what I'm trying to say by now. You've understood the moral of the story. Not all medical directions have the same significance. Searching on the internet, you may miss the forest for the trees. Sometimes, you may be too consumed with details of very little significance and miss or ignore problems that are much more significant. Some people do this because they reduce their stress this way. The strenuous search for the ideal fasting or the magical food helps them forget and ignore the more significant problems, which are right in front of them. They may talk for hours about the anticancer effect of each fruit, when they smoke. They may wonder about the ideal protocol of intermittent fasting, when their belly fat is really increased. And they may wonder if freshly ground flax is better, when they haven't exercised at all since the 4th grade. It's good to search on the internet and find directions of popularized science that we can apply in our everyday life. This is what I do too with my channel. But I don't want you to miss the forest for the trees. Quitting smoking, low belly fat, healthy diet and exercise are the pillars of good health. It's only on these that you can build. If these are non-existent, you have to spend most of your time not on finding which berries have the strongest anticancer effect, but on fixing these things. If you thought this was interesting, please give us a thumbs up. Share it with people who you think might find it interesting and subscribe to our channel in order to get notified when we upload a video. You can also suggest subjects in the comment section. Thank you very much!