Peter Attia· MD
but ascorbic acid is a powerful reducing agent and that might be altering the the assay so it's not able to get my glucose like skyrocket I know I went into a hypoglycemic but my ketones were elevated and I took a pretty big hit you know a vitamin C and I was just doing it just for the you know the self experimentation right so but what's the thought here so so I saw lots of people oxidative stress so vitamin C driving the Fenton reaction to produce more oxidative stress so vitamin C is a pro-oxidant when you get blood levels of vitamin C in the millimolar concentration then it becomes a pro-oxidant it's not an antioxidant so we're not using antioxidants are definitely don't want to use it yeah so it's gonna come back to that but the next thing is I'm sure somebody listening to this is gonna say well I don't have access to IV vitamin C if I wanted to do that you can't do it you can't do it orally because of what it's not you can't get it out of the gut enough yeah I can't you can only get like a very small amounts and then you know your gut Auto regulates it - so you just let's get to the next thing you said which is again highly counterintuitive to most people we're hardwired to think that there's nothing better for you than antioxidants yeah but paradoxically once you have cancer that might not be the case yeah so I think antioxidants may be blocking some of the efficacy of some of the some of therapies - right because many chemo therapeutic drugs their function works through enhancing oxidative stress radiation sure does so radiation maybe 20% of the cancer killing effects of radiation are due to damaging the DNA with double you know double strand Nix but 80% of the tumor killing effect of radiation is by the generation of reactive oxygen species now does that mean you can't have blueberries and things that have low levels of antioxidants I would say no but you don't want to kind of saturate your body with a cocktail of antioxidants like you don't want to do a glutathione push right after you do same FNAC see you wouldn't have any seed I personally would not don't think that none of the cancer studies and animal models or humans are supportive of the use of antioxidants and that was a big focus of me I mean when during my PhD I wanted to do a postdoc research in antioxidant cocktails that were gonna save the world and none of the research on antioxidants really panned out in my mind there's a couple things you know maybe for mitochondrial antioxidants for like Friedreich's ataxia and maybe ALS and some research there but it's pretty subtle benefits but in the context of cancer no I don't I think antioxidant should be avoided anything else in your pulse protocol yeah I mean there's a lot of things that you could add so with the press protocol I think a low dose of metformin could be helpful too so that will activate amp kinase maybe decrease insulin a little bit maybe increased ketones a little bit too and it's just a readily available cheap drug that has a very good safety profile 500 milligrams to 2,000 milligrams a day are usually well tolerated probably starting with 500 milligrams and working up but when it comes to the pulse protocol hyperbaric oxygen IV vitamin C and there are a number of drugs that were working with now one would be to deoxy glucose which in and of itself from a seizure world and I've I've been a reviewer in for the government for different grants and stuff and this is in the context of epilepsy 2dg is sort of like the ketogenic diet and a drug so by inhibiting glycolysis it has this gets back to the question right you have no ketones but you inhibit glycolytic pathways perhaps even like reduce sort of mTOR signaling or some glycolytic thing and that may have anti-seizure effects so 2dg is something that we're working with now I think 2dg originally developed for pharmacologically it's been around for a long time now for a long time I think maybe it was just in the realm of experimental compound but I know there's phase 2 trials in cancer the problem is it becomes cardiotoxic a of say 50 milligrams per kilogram I know can be I know there's some evidence at cardiotoxicity but at 25 milligrams per kilogram at least on some of the grants that I reviewed that was pretty good safety profile for epilepsy so you know not making any recommendations out there but I think 25 milligrams per kilogram seems to be within the realm of therapeutic efficacy and safety and this is being studied in humans and they're out of phase one so this is epileptic world yeah and I think there's some cancer trials going on too and I do think that synergize is really well once you create the environment where you put the press protocol into action then the cancer cells become even very selectively vulnerable to other things like the 2dg will inhibit a glycolytic pathway that drives the pentose phosphate pathway and that pentose phosphate pathway is responsible for enhancing the endogenous antioxidant capacity of cells so it makes the cancer cells even more vulnerable to oxidative stress the more you can inhibit the glycolytic pathways so to dg2 dichloro acetate is something that we've worked with to inhibit speedy h complex and that can be is DCA a drug that's been on the market for a long time it's a small molecule is yeah it's been on the market for a very long time what's it's normally used it's normal use is lactic acidosis actually so one of the side effects of metformin right is is once you start increasing the dose of metformin and