Pharmacy Focus
S2 Ep31: Pharmacy Focus - Oncology Edition: The Link Between Gut Health and Colon Cancer, Exploring the Wellness Innovation Network
(upbeat music) Hi, I'm Kennedy Frugia with Pharmacy Times and you're listening to Pharmacy Focus Oncology Edition, but we break down the latest news in the Oncology Pharmacy Space. On this episode of Pharmacy Focus, we sat down with Dr. Nelly Akar Lazo, a physician of oncology and hematology, along with Dr. Jennifer Dunphy, a doctor of public health. Together they discussed the link between gut health and colon cancer, along with the recent launch of the Wellness Innovation Network. So just to start, can you explain the Wellness Innovation Network and its recent launch? Wellness Innovation Network is a collection of experts founded by Dr. Nelly Lazo and myself, where we not only look into an aggregate current research on longevity, cancer, and chronic diseases, but we try to inform based on what's been done, where research should head in the future, where there's a dearth of research, where there's unanswered questions, and where maybe it's worth exploring a little deeper and in what ways. So we not only hope to advise research groups, but we also want to message findings that are applicable and actionable to real people, whether they're patients or whether they're just individuals with families trying to live a healthier lifestyle. We wanna spread messages on how they can be healthier and reduce their chance of chronic disease in the future. - Wonderful, that's great. So you both are collaborating on a white paper that will highlight the rise in cancer among the younger population. So how do you plan to raise awareness for this topic and for patients that are impacted? - This is actually a very topic that's still being researched. We do see that cancer is known to be, or used to be a cancer of older people, but lately in the past decade, we've seen that it's being more cancer of the younger patients. When we say younger patients who are in their 40s, 40 to 49, we didn't used to see cancer or the prevalence of cancer this high in this age group. So we don't know what exactly is causing that. Again, there is no clear answer. We're trying to help research. What could be causing that? There are so many theories out there on what could be causing it, but everything is still being researched. And what we can do as a physician, researchers, we can raise awareness for patients or for people how to live a healthy lifestyle. And when we say healthy lifestyle, meaning exercising, eating healthy, consuming less alcohol or not consuming alcohol, not smoking, having a healthy BMI, all these factors together. But unfortunately, we cannot pinpoint one risk factor or one factor that could be contributing to this or that we can change. - I think that one thing is clear in that it's multi-factorial. There is not one reason that we are finding or that researchers and doctors are finding that can be attributable solely to the rise or the decrease in age and rise in cancer in young people. It's going to be a combination of environmental factors as well as genetic vulnerabilities changes and genetically that predispose someone to cellular changes. And what we wanna do is figure out which one of these factors are modifiable? Which one of these factors can we act on and can we adjust lifestyles so that we can at least try to reduce the risk and the future. And I think that going on and pretending like this doesn't happen and it probably won't happen to you and not changing our lifestyle as a generation, as a population is sort of burying your head in the sand. So I think that we need to become much more aware of what could be causing this and then adjust the lifestyle accordingly so that we have a better chance of not being that unlucky person. Now, just to talk about the incidence of cancer in young people, it's still not very common. It's not a common disease in young people. It's just much more common than it has been in the past. So, not every young person is going to develop cancer but the incidence is rising in an alarming rate. So we do want to try to pinpoint which factors are contributing to that. - That's great actually, thanks Jen, yes. So I can add just one thing if we're talking clinically. So just we know that cancer is caused by damage to the cellular DNA at the cellular level. And all those risk factors that we can modify, that we can change could possibly lower the risk or prevent, but unfortunately there is not one thing we can say if you do this, you won't have cancer or you'll be at lower risk of having cancer. It's so many factors all together. - I definitely agree and that's really insightful. All the information you guys both shared. But switching gears, so recently you reviewed a study that indicates a potential link between colon cancer and gut health. So can you describe what was found in this study? - I will always start by explaining a little bit what, how does cancer happen? So normally in our gut, we have normal bacteria that live in our gut. And those bacteria are known to protect the cells that cause layers around our gut. So studies have showed that any damage to that epithelium to those cells can eventually lead to cancer. And again, we say can because it's not, nothing is 100% sure, we are still researching all this. So if we think about it, what do we do? What do we eat? What do we, what supplements do we take? What do we drink? All these factors can possibly lead to cellular damage of our gut and eventually lead to cancer. And the study specifically the one we reviewed did talk about high and we have to say excessive because we all eat some amount of red meat or processed meat or alcohol or drink alcohol, but we have to emphasize that it has to be excessive amount. Excessive amount of processed meat, excessive amount of red meat, excessive alcohol, excessive sugary drinks, those are all things that can lead to cellular epithelial damage and eventually disrupt the normal bacteria on our gut and can cause cancer. Now, I know they did mention antibiotics use and it's all, and again, we say excessive because we don't want people not to be treated for infections by antibiotics, but excessive use can cause this cellular epithelial damage and can lead to DNA damage eventually and cancer. So those are the main things we eat or we drink. And of course, cellular damage can be caused by an activity or physical inactivity, obesity, but we don't know the exact mechanism, how that happens, but we do believe that or the research showed that inflammation, the inflammation in our system and our gut can eventually need to cellular damage and cancer. - The study highlighted one of the risk factors was being exposed to things during adolescence, which we view as a vulnerable period of life because that's your growing, your cells are changing and the eating the wrong thing or eating an excess of the wrong thing, including sugary sweetened beverages, was tied to early onset colon cancer. So if you're a mom, a dad, your parent, and you have a young family, it's important to start healthy habits early because it's shown that what you consume during this period of life is quite impactful in regards to your health as an adult. - Yes, it's definitely an important link to point out. It's very helpful to acknowledge that early on, but how do the results found in the study impact the overall health among individuals with colon cancer? - Prevention is very important. Prevention of having cancer, but also prevention of the cancer recurrence, if the patient is already treated for now it's often colon cancer, if they are treated for colon cancer, they're in remission, all these factors we talked about will definitely help prevent the cancer recurrence. So we definitely recommend the patient to eat healthy, less processed food, consume less alcohol, have a healthy habits like exercising and maintaining a healthy BMI and not just drinking less sugary drinks, lower the amount of sugar they eat. All these factors are not specifically recommended for colon cancer prevention, but in general, those are known to help prevent any cancer from recurring or coming back. - Yes, definitely. That kind of went into my next question. I was going to ask about dietary and lifestyle modifications, but as you discussed, it's really limiting a lot of those factors. - Actually, we talked about limiting the amount of meat or processed food, but also high-fiber diet and diet rich in vegetables and fruit has shown to be beneficial, actually, and if we consume a lot of those, that that can help prevent carcinogenesis or development of cancer. - And then to add on to the health side, an interesting finding in this study, as well as some other studies, is showing that the sedentary lifestyle actually changes the microbiome of your gut. And they found that in moderate physical activity, there's actually more health promoting bacteria in your gut. So even moderate activity changes the protective factors inside your intestines. So that's a very, I think, a very profound statement because it's not only what we're consuming, but it's what we're doing that impacts whether we have more disease-promoting bacteria in our gut or more protective bacteria in our gut. And there's many things you can do to sort of change that balance, regardless of your history, regardless of maybe poor choices you've made from a behavioral standpoint in terms of health in the past. So engaging in these healthy activities, it's never too late to do that. - Definitely, so there's some room for changes, even if someone did start off on a different path when they were younger, as you're explaining before. But that's all the questions I had. Is there anything else that you'd both like to add before we wrap up? - You know, while we don't know what's really causing cancer in younger generations and some of it may be genetic and certain people may be more predisposed to it, there is a lot we can still do to lower our risk levels. And I think that everyone should be paying attention to the newest research and what is evidenced as behaviors that we can adopt that will lower our risk. - And I want to add also, so as a physician who treats patients who would cancer, as a mom who's raising young kids who wants her family to be healthy, who wants the people around her to be healthy, we want to try to raise awareness, make people aware of small things we deal with every day on a regular basis, whether it is the food we eat, whether it is the candy we offer to our kids, whether it is the material we use to cook or to serve food to our children, all of these things. It's very important to make people aware that we are exposed to chemicals on a daily basis and we want to try to avoid those as much as possible. And another thing is, it doesn't specifically apply to very young patients, but any patients who is at an age appropriate for screening to detect any type of cancer early on, especially colon cancer, colonoscopy, is a fairly simple procedure that can be done starting at age 45 to detect any early stage cancer that can be treated very early on and cured. We want people to be aware of that and to know that there are means to detect cancer very early on and treat it and cure it and hopefully people will be more and more aware of all these things. - Yes, definitely. Thank you both so much, this was excellent. And thank you so much for everyone listening. Once again, this was Pharmacy Focus Oncology Edition. Tune in next month for some more updates. (upbeat music)