Up One

Sawyer Stone: [00:00:00] Welcome to Up One, the podcast where we take a deep dive into the science behind supplements, therapies, and diagnostics. I'm Sawyer Stone, your guide through the Maze of Health Claims. Here to ask the big questions.
Dr. Bill Andrews: And I'm Dr. Bill Andrews With decades of experience in medical research, I've dedicated my career to uncovering.
The real science behind disease, aging, and human health. On this podcast, we don't just skin the surface of scientific studies. We conduct a critical meta-analysis separating credible research from misleading conclusions.
Sawyer Stone: There's a lot of noise out there, conflicting studies, bold claims, and endless marketing up.
One is here to cut through it all and bring you science backed insights that you can actually trust.
Dr. Bill Andrews: We're talking prevention, diagnostics, treatments, and the big questions shaping the future of health.
Sawyer Stone: If you're [00:01:00] serious about understanding the science of health and longevity without the fluff, let's take it Up One.
Today we're tackling a question that sparks a lot of frustration and a lot of myths. Why haven't we cured major diseases like cancer, Alzheimer's, or heart disease? Yet
Dr. Bill Andrews: it's easy to assume that with all the money, tech and talent in the world, we should have cures by now, but the truth is more complex and more eye-opening.
And then you realize
Sawyer Stone: we'll debunk some of the most common myths. Examine the real scientific roadblocks and talk about what's actually working behind the scenes. Alright, Dr. Bell, our first question is, is maintaining a positive attitude sufficient to overcoming diseases like cancer? So many people believe that positive mindsets alone can lead to recovery from serious illnesses.
Does this align with the current scientific understanding? [00:02:00]
Dr. Bill Andrews: Well, it definitely helps, um, a a lot of like health related things are depending upon, um, oxidative stress, inflammation, uh, things like that. Um, and we know that, um, uh, positive thinking, optimism, things like that do reduce stress and, uh, oxidative damage.
And so. That alone provides a, a benefit to people's health. Now, I've spoken a lot on things like, uh, telomere shortening, and one of two studies I frequently talk about relate to the idea that people that are pessimistic have shorter telomeres than people that are optimistic. Uh, and which was kind of a surprise when people did the study, but, or did the Stu studies.
The point is, is that if you, if you think you'll [00:03:00] won't live to be a hundred, it's more likely that you won't just because pessimism is accel accelerating aging. So yeah, anything you do that's, that's positive thinking is gonna be a benefit. But it's not the only thing, it's there's, I don't believe, and I don't think anybody in the scientific community believes that that's sufficient all by itself.
Okay.
Sawyer Stone: All right. Well, why do you think we haven't cured cancer despite significant technological advancements? Some people argue that if humanity can achieve feats, like a moon landing, curing cancer should be attainable. What is it about cancer that makes it uniquely challenging?
Dr. Bill Andrews: It's probably not so much cancer is relative to all other health related issues, but, um, let's see.
John F. Kennedy. Said, let's go to the moon in 1961. So all the funding went to one organization, nasa, uh, and there was a pretty much big emphasis on [00:04:00] like making it successful. I mean, people weren't gonna cut corners. Say, okay, here's a way to do it cheaper. Here's a way we can make more money off of it.
When they knew that their success. Or their failure would affect the lives of the astronauts and things like that. So, so it was like a, a different type type of thing. And all the work, most of the work was done internally at nasa and it wasn't done like, well, let's, let's go to Nixon now. Nixon, Nixon declared the War on Cancer in 19, uh, 71.
And, um, right away. I was approached, approached from a totally different way there, you know, national Cancer Society, things like that were created. But it wasn't so much that all the cancer research was done in one internal organization like, like nasa. It was, it was actually more providing grants to academic research labs to focus on getting the research done elsewhere.
So, so. There two [00:05:00] entirely different things. One is all the work was done under one organization in terms of going to the moon, whereas in, uh, curing cancer and other diseases, it's all been, uh, granting organizations funding research labs to, to do the work. And the problem with, with the later approach was that funding was never enough.
There's all kinds of obstacles, uh, in, in, uh. Academic labs to actually get work done. Uh, the principal investigators, the people who really should be at the lab bench doing the research, they're, they're all, they have teaching requirements. They have, they're spending every bit of their time writing grants.
They have to continually publish because of this. Notion of publish or perish. In fact, um, one of the main things that granting organizations look at when they are proving or or disapproving a, a grant is the number [00:06:00] of publications that the author has. And so, so a lot of these things have really interfered with getting, uh, the cures done.
And like it or not, there is, there is this knowledge that. It is actually not good for society to keep the longer lived around, especially when they're unhealthy. And so it's actually bene more beneficial to society to eliminate the longer lived. Uh, and, uh, uh, so I say like it or not, I, I, I'm totally opposed to that, but from a government perspective, yeah.
Why spend a lot of money to only increase the burden already that exists on. People in nursing homes and assisted living homes and hospices and things like that. Um, so, so there's been a lot of different reasons why, uh, curing cancer and other diseases aren't the [00:07:00] same as sending a man to the moon. Now, the, uh, there's other ways of getting funding.
You don't have to necessarily, uh, if, if somebody is interested in cancer or something like, uh, getting grants. Uh, find investors, but traditional investors, they, they're, they're, they're actually in the business of investing because they're trying to make profits. They're trying to get quick return on their investments.
And so, I mean, I, I've experienced this firsthand a lot. Okay. Um, I, I, I've actually, for instance, I've never ever accepted a grant. Um, and, uh, uh. There's, uh, uh, in the, uh, what is it called? Um, federal Code of Regulations. Uh, I think it's section 4 0 1 or four 10 or something like that, that that talks about how in grants, if you don't [00:08:00] reach certain milestones, et cetera, you'll actually lose control of your project.
The government will take it over. And so that's one of the reasons, like when I've applied for grants and got the grants. I've always sent the money back because of the, um, uh, restrictions. Well, some of the, a lot of more restrictions than the ones I just mentioned, but there's a lot of restrictions that actually interfere with actually getting the work done and puts you at great risk of losing all your intellectual property.
Sawyer Stone: Okay.
Dr. Bill Andrews: So traditional investors is another way to go and, and as I. They're all interested in a return on investment. And in my past when I've had traditional investors, I, I've had like 50 plus investors. Uh, I've raised 30, over $30 million, uh, to do research. But the investors are all interested in quick return on investments and, and it's not just me.
I've got lots of friends [00:09:00] that have started companies and have experienced the same type of things. Investors would take over my scientific strategy meetings, and not just at my company now, but at previous companies that I worked with too. Same, same kind of thing. We'd all be under control of the investors' wishes more than the goal of what the company was first created for.
Investors would take over my, uh, scientific strategy meetings and tell the scientist. Work on something else to bring quick return on investment and make some profits, and then we'll get back to the main goal later on. And so we would do that, but then like, especially hit me hard at my company, but 10, 12 years ago was, we succeeded at everything was major success.
Uh, they, all the investors got together in a big room, uh, and discussed. How excited they were about the success they're celebrating. And the head of the [00:10:00] investment group got on stage after I'd already presented all the results on stage, uh, and said, okay, I think it's time to sell the company. Oh my gosh.
For a profit. And that blew me away because they were gonna sell all my intellectual property, my, uh, non-compete clauses, and my contracts prevented me from. Doing further work in the area because I would be competing with the, the, uh, company that they, they sold my company to. Hmm. And I've had a lot of friends ruined simply on that kind of like, uh, tactic by investors.
I was lucky in that I had, uh, like of the 50 plus investors, there were two or three of them. They were more interested in curing their aging than in actually getting quick return on their investment. And they orchestrated a complete takeover, which gave me control of the company, a hundred percent ownership of the company.[00:11:00]
And, uh, I was able to continue my research, so, and on the condition that I never. Never went with traditional investors or venture capitalists. Uh, again, and that's something I haven't done since then. Self investing is a, is a way, I mean, if I thought the best way to actually get cancer cured would be to find one of those ultra high net worth individuals.
Uh, and pretty much you gotta focus on the high net worth individuals because they're not as focused on. Return on investment, they're, they're just, they're sitting somewhere in their sauna thinking that a cure for aging and cure for cancer and things like that are underway. And they, they can, all they have to do is wait for this to happen, but it's not happening.
Uh, it would be nice if somebody were to listen to this podcast and get in contact with one of these unknown ultra high net worth individuals and tell 'em. You know, [00:12:00] put some of your wealth. 'cause there's trillionaires out there, you know, you know, they're not gonna show up in Forbes, but there's people with trillions of dollars that could fund this research and say, okay, let's actually cure cancer.
Instead of just trying to find a way to make a profit. Let's, let's, let's not cut corners like on in nasa. Nobody would say, oh, we can do this cheaper this way. It might, might put a astronauts at risk, but let's. Let's, um, let's not focus on investment. Okay. So the ultra high net worth individual could do that same type of thing, and that's, I think that's what's really needed.
We need to get some of these unknown ultra high net worth individuals to get off their butts. Yeah, and actually. Take charge and you know, you know, they're not gonna know what to do, but they can find people like myself and, and others that Yeah. That know what needs to be done. I was, I was national inventor of the year for my cancer research.
I know a lot about cancer. [00:13:00] I remember when I was at Geron Corporation, I outlined, uh, five different ways of, of curing cancer research that we could do with curing cancer. But. You know, four of the five, uh, required just designing something, whereas the fifth one required some discovery research. And I, uh, I was very vocal about the, the ideas that the first four, uh, would never succeed, uh, because of the fact that cancers will always come back, et cetera.
Um, uh, and most notably, there's a. Drug on the market right now called Ello, R-Y-T-E-L-O, and I invented that over 30 years ago. And I, it was called GRN 1 63 when I first invented it. And then, uh, they changed it to eel stat [00:14:00] I-M-E-T-E-L-S-T-A-T, and then later changed it to Ella. It's been through clinical studies.
It's only just recently after 30 years. Finally been, uh. Approved for uses in some types of cancer.
Sawyer Stone: Hmm.
Dr. Bill Andrews: But what I, what I made it really clear 30 plus years ago is that yes, it will make cancers go away, but it'll also skyrocket mutation rates, which will increase the ability of the cancer to come back.
Sawyer Stone: Yeah. Uh,
Dr. Bill Andrews: and it's not, it's not because eels stat causes mutations, but it's because it inhibits an enzyme called telomerase, which I was led the research to discovered. Uh, and inhibiting telomerase will make telomeres get shorter and short. Telomeres critically short telomeres will cause mutation rates to skyrocket, cause Things like chromo therapists and, uh, cais, uh, which are, [00:15:00] are two different forms of very visible mutations that occur in cells.
And that when, when you start increasing mutation rates in cancer cells, you only end up finding that some of those cells find ways to, uh, overcome whatever you're treating them with. And they, they, they come back. Yeah. So now the approach that I've always taken was to, instead of inhibiting telomerase, was to actually poison any telomerase positive cells.
And that would require, you know, I, I, I came up with some idea called toxic nucleotides. Uh, that would only, uh, nucleotides would be incorporated into DNA when, uh, either polymerase adds new, uh, creates new DNA in the chromosome, or when polymerases create new DNA when during DNA replication, but find toxic nucleotides that.
Only [00:16:00] polymerase would recognize and other polymerases in the cell wouldn't recognize. But that was, they decided, oh, that's too much work. Too expensive, can't get done. So it never got done. Okay. So now we got these drugs on the market and you know, there's all four of the five ideas that I recommended that were taken on, and none of 'em are really working for all the reasons that I said they wouldn't work 30 years ago.
Uh, and, uh, but that, that's the problem. So again, you know, it's all funding. It's all trying to find some way of, of getting the research done at the same time, satisfying the funding sources. That's been the really big obstacles, and as I said, I, I've worked with a lot of great scientists. A lot of them have become very frustrated.
I'll never forget the day when we were working on a way of. Preventing blood clots, uh, with a, a molecule that on [00:17:00] one of the discoveries of called Thrombo Modlin, we actually started doing clinical studies on Thrombo Modlin and the FDA pulled the plug on us. We were, you know, the whole team was in a meeting in, uh, Berlin at the time, and there was an announcement, there was gonna be a special meeting.
Um. In a conference room. So all of the researchers got together in that conference room, and it was announced to us that the FDA pulled the plug on us doing clinical studies on Proma module. And because they said it can't compete with low molecular weight heparins and, uh, I mean, how would the FDA know that?
I mean, clinical studies had only gotten started. It wasn't, wasn't terminated for any reason except for commercial marketing. Things and um, I mean literally scientists were in that room crying because they were so interested in seeing this research done. It would've [00:18:00] been a great way to prevent, decrease the risk of heart attacks and blood clots and strokes tremendously.
But yeah, it got totally canned. Now, 30 years later, actually, this is like 45 years later anyway, 35 years later, trauma Modlin is back in clinical studies. Uh, it's, it's like, think about all that time that got lost because of the FDA was more focused on commercial aspects instead of the actual benefits to the, the product.
Uh, I mean, it is like, uh, I mean, have I left anything? What, what are some of the ways to get research done? Um,
Sawyer Stone: well, you're actually sort of leading into my next question.
Dr. Bill Andrews: Oh, okay.
Sawyer Stone: Yeah. So, Dr. Will, I wanna go back to your, your, your sort of hot take, which is that maybe cancer isn't necessarily the enemy because the government is maybe not excited about supporting [00:19:00] a longevity of life that we would like to see.
And then you were talking a little bit about how drug companies and the FDA and others. Other entities that are sort of associated with the government are having their hand in research and whether that changes whether the research continues or stops, or the way the research goes, or whether the research goes in terms of what the drug is gonna be used for.
Our drug companies withholding cures for major diseases to maintain profitability. There's a very pervasive belief that pharmaceutical companies suppress cures to continue profiting from treatments. What evidence exists to support or refute this claim? I feel like you've shared a lot about the support.
Dr. Bill Andrews: I wouldn't say that drug companies withhold cures. Okay. I, I, I could imagine that being happening, but even if it was happening, there's other things that are actually a bigger obstacle than actually, than withholding that. And that's, and and I [00:20:00] think the best example is COVID vaccines. Okay, so, so, you know, four, four or more big pharma companies rapidly made vaccines that would fight COVID, but they did it in ways that made the vaccines far less efficient than, um, traditional vaccines.
Okay, and that's a whole subject I could spend an hour on, and I won't do it now, but. So, so they got these on the market really fast. They were making a lot of money from it. Uh, in the meantime, other scientists, including myself, were coming up with ways of making vaccines that would be more effective. Uh, and uh, I mean, I don't think anybody's gonna deny the fact that the breakthroughs prove that the vaccines were not working nearly as well as like a typical flu vaccine and things like that.
I'm, I'm not an [00:21:00] anti-vaxxer. I get. Flu vaccines, everything all the time, stuff like that. But I, I definitely, and I've invented three vaccines in the past, uh, for pneumonia and high dysentery. And, um, I, I know how vaccines work and I, I know that there's some illogic problems to, to the, uh, traditional vaccines that are used now for, for COVID.
But the problem was, is that when I would come up with an idea for a better vaccine, and friends of mine would also come up with other vaccines, and a lot of these things were in collaboration with other scientists. We couldn't get investors because investors would say, well, we'd never be able to compete with those.
Big pharma companies already have the vaccines on, and it was like right away. Oh God, they're only interested in return on investment. They're not interested in the health. Yeah. Uh, and, uh, you know, again, this is a great chance for these [00:22:00] unknown ultra high net worth individuals to come forward. And I, I say unknown.
I said it before too, because the known ultra high net worth individuals, they're all successful because they are interested in return on investment. I've. Every, every single ultra high net worth individual sitting in my conference room right across the table from me trying to get them to invest in my research and stuff.
But they, they all say, sure, but they would want control. They want quick return on investment. They wanna make profits.
Sawyer Stone: It's about the business, not about the science.
Dr. Bill Andrews: Yeah. And so, and so, I kind of like turned my back on that whole idea, uh, and, you know. You, you think of somebody, you, I guarantee they've been here.
Uh, but, um, it's actually the competition. Uh, and, and so even, even people that have come up with cures for different things, I, I'm, I'm a scientific advisor for like, what, six different companies [00:23:00] right now. And I've seen some great ideas for, for curing Alzheimer's, for curing, uh, cardiomyopathy, things like that.
But they can't get funding because of the, even the granting organizations would turn 'em down because they, they don't see how the product could ever be successful, given that there's already products out there that would do the same job, just not as well. Uh, so yeah, I, I, I don't think, I'm not aware of any case, case of where a big pharma company.
Is actually preventing a product from getting on the market. You know, as I mentioned before, I was National Inventor of the year for my cancer research. I, when I was working at other biotech companies or big pharma companies, we, we, we would invent like a cancer drug or we'd discover a cancer treatment, things like that.
And as soon as the research got done, it would be turned over to the clinical affairs group. [00:24:00] I would be always attending the clinical affairs meetings, but I really was not in control of things. Uh, and I would listen to the clinical affairs group, cut corners, okay. Say, okay, we can, we can skip this test, we can find a cheaper way to do the clinical study.
We can, et cetera, et cetera. And, and I would say, Hey, you're gonna kill somebody. And, uh, they would say, well, that's okay. The FDA gave us approval. And, um, I, or I would say, um, well, suppose the drug doesn't work. If we don't include this test in the clinical study, how are we gonna know why it didn't work and how we can finagle it to make it work?
And they would say, well, that's not the goal here. The goal is to see if this drug is ready for clinical studies. I. Uh, we're not doing a research [00:25:00] project to find an alternative drug to, to pursue. And I always thought, okay, so that's, that's really interfering with a lot of drug development, uh, especially when you can't use clinical studies to obtain data to find out how to come up with a second generation drug that will work when the first one didn't work.
Uh. Clinical affairs will say, well find out if it's not gonna work by doing your in vitro studies. Well, I know that in vitro studies and animal studies very rarely translate to humans. Hmm. Uh, and so you can have like almost every cancer drug that I've been involved in developing work beautifully in mice.
It cured cancer in all cases in mice, but then in in clinical studies. It wouldn't work and then we wouldn't know why it didn't work because we didn't do all the testing and things like that. And uh, just like this thro module I mentioned before, [00:26:00] it's like the clinical studies got cut. We did a first level, first preliminary clinical study.
And, uh, results weren't as good as, or weren't, weren't better. They were equal to low andoid heparin, but they weren't better. But that's 'cause we designed the experiment. To, to be able to, so that it wouldn't show if it was better or not. But yeah, that, that's, I'm pretty much answered my question. Answered your question.
I think.
Sawyer Stone: I think so too. Yeah. Long-winded. No, that's okay. It's very complicated and seems definitely lopsided towards the monetary version versus the science version. It's kind of the exact opposite of my next question, which is, do any super foods or drastic dietary changes have the power to cure major diseases?
You know, we've got all these rise of these different health trends that promote certain foods as cure alls, and like people say, cruciferous vegetable. Is something that can cure your cancer. If you alkalize your body, [00:27:00] which involves a lot of different greens that can help make your body an an inhabitable place for cancer.
There's all this stuff that's, are these actually effective in disease treatment?
Dr. Bill Andrews: Yeah, well, they're effect, I mean, definitely a healthier lifestyle, healthier diet. It's gonna increase your body's ability to fight any disease. Uh, but it's not gonna be, it's not gonna succeed all by itself. Um. And, and some ca some cases it will.
Okay. But, uh, uh, you'd mentioned ous, whatever that word is. Cruciferous. Cruciferous, uh, foods like broccoli, things like that, that comes up a lot. Uh, uh, Sephora, Sephora, Fane, which is found in those things and those kind of foods is getting a lot of attention because of its ability to induce NF NRF two production.
And NRF two has been heavily publicized to reduce oxidative stress. [00:28:00] Okay. So, yeah, I mean, that's a fact. I mean, so, but you know, I'm trying to think of the company's name. There's one company that badges me all the time about trying to get me to help them promote their NRF two inducing product because it reduces oxidative stress, but.
I keep saying the data's not really there, and NRF two is probably a good thing to have, but the data's not really there to really promote that it's gonna work better than taking antioxidant supplements and things like that. I personally will never, ever get into promoting false claims or misleading the truth and things like that, and so I just won't, I, I refuse to, to help them.
Uh, but, uh. But it still, it is a benefit. It's just that, is there other ways to get benefits too? Now the, the nice thing about Superfood that some of them, [00:29:00] not all of them, not all of 'em are great. 'cause there's a lot of people that just interested in return on investment, focus on superfood, that, that, uh, decrease toxins, uh, that uh, uh, decrease oxidative stress, you know?
Include fiber or anything that helps the microbiome, uh, you know, uh, decrease inflammation, the number one cause of aging and aging related diseases. Inflammation. Hmm. Every scientist in the field working on anti-aging will tell you that.
Sawyer Stone: Yeah.
Dr. Bill Andrews: Uh, so anything that, any foods or stuff like that that decrease inflammation.
Is gonna benefit your body's ability to prevent disease and fight disease. Our immune system is very, very sensitive to toxins and inflammation. Well, inflammation is our immune system, but uh, oxidative is very sensitive to oxidative stress. Et cetera. So any of [00:30:00] these things, in fact, psychological stress too.
Okay. As I mentioned before, studies are showing that optimism helps keep your telomeres long, and pessimism helps, keeps 'em short.
Sawyer Stone: Hmm.
Dr. Bill Andrews: And telomere telomere length is a good marker of overall health. Yeah, so, so I, I, I'm a big, big fan of healthy diets superfoods, but I, because of my ability to do critical meta-analysis of peer reviewed studies.
I'm, I'm really good at being able to zoom in on which products are really gonna do the job and which ones aren't. Uh. That kind. You can tell you. A lot of them go, what's that?
Sawyer Stone: Yeah. Well, I was gonna say, that leads me to my next question 'cause it is about dietary supplements. Well, because some supplements are synthetic and some supplements are whole food-based that we were talking about food mainly, and superfoods and stuff earlier versus if it's synthetically made, it doesn't have the same nutrients that a Whole Foods supplement might have.
Dr. Bill Andrews: Yeah, that's a, that's [00:31:00] a touchy subject because. Um, I mean, it, it, it's a case by case. Okay. I'm a vegan. I don't, I, I like to eat organic. Uh, I am, I, there's a lot of other things about my diet that are really focused on trying to stay healthy, and so I, yeah, so I'm, I'm a big food, big fan of whole food, plant-based, uh, diets.
But I'm also aware of the fact that, uh. They aren't perfect. Okay. So I do take pharmaceuticals too. Uh, but I have the ability to be able to look at all the studies and, and be able to decide which pharmaceuticals are good and which ones aren't, and which ones were produced by companies that we're only interested in return on investments.
That, that's, that's another thing that I didn't mention before, is in my past experiences working with. Large pharmas, the company would be very interested in terminating a project [00:32:00] before it was done. Just because they said, okay, this is sufficient enough to generate a return on investment. And the scientists would say, wow, we can make it better.
You know, we can get rid of side effects and things like that, doing medicinal chemistry. But they would say, no, that's too expensive. Let's just go with what we got. And I can't tell you how many times that has happened to me in the past. Um, but uh, yeah, so, so I do believe. Number one, the best thing to do a plant-based diet is, um, the best thing a person could be doing.
Uh, and I, I like to reference usually when I talk about that, uh, a book called Inflammation Nation, where they talk about arachidonic acid. And, uh, uh, a arachidonic acid is a very inflammatory fatty acid that is found in, uh, meats foul fish. Dairy, but, uh, it's not found in plants and so, so that's a, that's a, especially a good reason to focus [00:33:00] on a plant-based vegan diet.
But yeah, it, it's, I, I, I guess I wanna say that plants didn't evolve to be beneficial for humans. Okay. Humans evolved to accept a plant-based diet. That's, that's the other side of the coin. And so
Sawyer Stone: interesting
Dr. Bill Andrews: from an evolutionary perspective, which I'm, I'm, I'm very part of my PhD was in population genetics, which is the study of the why and how of evolution, not the what and when.
From an evolutionary perspective, there's no evolutionary advantage to living longer than it takes to raise your young, just like with society, the species is. That are likely to survive by eliminating the longer lived. So plant-based diets only really have help us because we evolved to, to be that way, [00:34:00] help us live long enough to raise our young afterwards.
It doesn't really provide that much benefit, but it does. I mean it does. It does provide the benefits because it provides the same benefits it did to get you to live long enough to have, raise your young. Continuing that is a really good thing for you, but it's not gonna be the, the cure all. Okay. Uh, sometimes I think it is important to, uh, resort to, uh, pharmaceuticals and others, other ways of, of, of, uh, keeping yourself healthy.
Sawyer Stone: Yeah. Well, is there a risk that's associated with consuming high doses of vitamins or minerals through supplementation? I mean, some people assume that more is better when it comes to vitamins. Is there potential danger? Could you mega dose and maybe possibly overdose on a supplement? I know some of that is more common with pharmaceuticals than it is with whole food-based,
Dr. Bill Andrews: you know?
Well, um, [00:35:00] let, let, lemme say that nutraceuticals, um, sometimes our are more toxic than people realize. So it's not, it's not necessarily a solution. But in terms of minerals and. Uh, vitamins. It pretty much depends on whether they're water soluble or fat soluble. Um, okay. The, uh, water soluble, you can take tons and tons of it, and it's, and if you take too much, it just, it just gets flushed out with your pee.
Uh, and, uh, so there's really not a concern there. Uh, and the same is true whether you're. Uh, pharmaceutical or nutraceutical, but the fat soluble vitamins and minerals, um, fat solubles include like vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E, vitamin K. Those things can build up quite a lot in your body and since all vitamins and minerals are.[00:36:00]
Very involved in all bio and many biochemical pathways and, and everything. There's ability, tox effect. Okay. There's such a thing as too much of a biochemical pathway per, uh, doing its job. And there's such thing as too little of a biochemical pathway doing its job. You want some place in the middle and so taking too much, too much of the especially fat soluble stuff is gonna.
Overdo things, you know, it's like revving an engine too much. Uh, yeah. So, so it's a case by case again there. So yeah, definitely. I always follow the instructions on the bottle. Okay. Especially, and the, the, probably the most important one to really not overdue is, is, uh, um, antioxidants, because most antioxidants.
Oxidants, they, they actually increase free radicals. Oh. Increase oxidative stress when taken [00:37:00] too much. So definitely this, when you look at the bottles, the, the dose is determined by the fact of. When is it optimal? Okay. Yeah. So stick with that. So never, never increase your antioxidants.
Sawyer Stone: Do supplements equate to being safe and free from side effects?
I mean, you're sort of talking about that here. Is it, I mean, you're saying that if I'm hearing you properly, you're saying that it's based on each supplement and, and that specific to the dosage amount, that's what someone that's taking those should be aware of, but. It's common perception that because supplements are natural, whole foods, supplements are natural, they're inherently safe, which is maybe some, some is true of that, some is not true of that.
Dr. Bill Andrews: That's exactly what you just said is exactly some cases it's true. In some cases it's not true. But, um, we do a lot of like drug development, uh, and not just drugs, but nutraceuticals too. Here, and we do what's called high throughput drug screening [00:38:00] to test different natural products or nutraceuticals and also pharmaceuticals.
And we actually do find that a lot of the nutraceuticals are toxic. Okay. But, but not that, I mean, I mean, some of 'em are super toxic, especially the ones that are like chemotherapies, nutraceutical, chemotherapies. Yeah. That you want them to be toxic. But the, uh, uh, a lot of the, I'm not gonna mention names.
A lot of the, uh, well-known nutraceuticals that everybody takes do have toxic side effects. In fact, we use, uh, in our, in our toxicity controls. So whenever we're screened for pharmaceuticals or nutraceuticals, we include toxicity controls to weed out anything that's toxic and for our toxicity controls.
We use three popular, uh, nutraceuticals. Hmm. Uh, and so whether it's [00:39:00] a pharmaceutical or a nutraceutical, we throw away anything that's more toxic than these three nutraceuticals. Uh, and, uh, which, which I wish all, all biotech companies would do because too many, especially pharmaceuticals, too many toxic pharmaceuticals get on the market because.
The companies were, didn't wanna spend the extra mo money to make 'em safer. Um, but uh, yeah, I, I'd say, I'd say that yeah, you're better off with nutraceuticals, but it doesn't mean that you are, things are perfect. There's still gonna be cases of where nutraceuticals are harmful to you. And I mean, okay, so let's look at from a different perspective.
Okay. When you buy a pharmaceutical, you always see all the side effects. Okay, well, the FDA requires this, okay? When the doctors prescribe a medication, they're required to inform the patient of the possible side effects that [00:40:00] occur. And so those are always listed, and that scares a lot of people away because practically every pharmaceutical has all these possible side effects, but that's because everybody's different.
Everybody is, some people are gonna be affected by one thing, other people are not. So it's like you have to know, you have to learn about yourself, and you have to also, uh, learn about, about what the, uh, side effects really are and how, how meaningful they are. Now, nutraceuticals, I mean, I, I've worked with a lot of companies.
That have put nutraceuticals on the market and a patient will call in and say, you know, I, I took your nutraceutical and I was in sick. I was in bed sick throwing up and headaches and everything like that for a week. My goodness. And the nutraceutical company will say, well, stop taking it. And that's it.
The FDA doesn't require them to list all the side effects, but that doesn't mean that nutraceuticals don't have side effects. And, and [00:41:00] again, everybody's different. So there's no, there's never been a chemical or a nutraceutical on the planet that's been discovered that isn't gonna have a negative side effect on somebody.
Yeah. So there's always gonna be some kind of thing, but it's like, it's like, it's, yeah. It's, it's tough to choose. But I'm gonna recommend, um, a book, in fact, there's two books, um, probably the best book ever written on supplements.
K-A-U-F-M-A-N-N. I can't remember if there's two Fs or one n or whatever, but, um, the book's called the Kaufman Protocol, and there's two, two volumes of that. I think that's the best book because it's, it's formulas on how to figure out what's the right supplements to take and stuff like that. I, I used to, when I spoke on stage, I used to go through the supplements and describe everything.
Now I just refer everybody to Dr. Kaufman's book. Okay. And, uh, but yeah, it's, it's, [00:42:00] there's no easy answer. There's no magic pill that's gonna make everybody feel better. It, it's like the, the combination of the right things is the best way to go move forward.
Sawyer Stone: Yeah. Well, I feel like you maybe answered this, but just to clarify with like a short response, are dietary supplements regulated for safety and efficiency before reaching consumers?
I think you've said no. That the FDA has a different standard, that they hold a nutraceutical too than they do a pharmaceutical.
Dr. Bill Andrews: It depends on the company selling the nutraceutical. Okay. Some companies, and pretty much the ones that I work with are very, very good at. Really weeding out whether or not the nutraceuticals are bad for you or good for you.
Okay? But most of the companies, let's say 90% of 'em at least, don't really care because the FDA was restricted a long time ago from controlling nutraceuticals. Uh, [00:43:00] there's a clause that's commonly called the gra, GRAS, which stands for generally regarded and safe. Because of the fact that, um, humans have been taking these nutraceuticals for thousands and thousands of years, the FDA is not allowed to regulate nutraceuticals.
And so a lot of the companies take advantage of that and put nutraceuticals on the market, even though the nutraceuticals could have some serious toxic side effects, but they can get away with it. Uh, and, uh. Uh, but yeah, and so it's, people have to be careful. Um, I, I always say, uh, look for the Sierra Sciences or Bill Andrews seal of approval.
Okay? Because believe me, I am just as interested in my own health as I am everybody else's health. And I, I, I definitely do the critical meta-analysis of peer reviewed studies to [00:44:00] really find out what's. What's safe, what's not safe, what works and what doesn't work. Yeah. And that's the best way to proceed.
Sawyer Stone: Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Just to switch over gears a little bit, how does the complexity and variability of diseases like cancer impede the development of Universal cause cures? Considering that cancer encompasses a vast array of diseases with unique genetic profiles, how does this diversity challenge the creation of a single cure?
I mean, even down to the different stages that people get it in, that has to be a challenge as well.
Dr. Bill Andrews: Okay. Well, people debate me on this a lot. Um, and no offense to these people, a lot of 'em are not. Qualified to be debate on this subject, but I, I was national inventor of the year for my cancer research. I do know a lot about cancer and things I'm gonna say people are gonna challenge.
Okay? One is [00:45:00] every cancer is different. Every cancer is caused by mutations. The simple fact that every cancer is different means that. Every cancer needs to be targeted in a different way to cure that cancer.
Sawyer Stone: Yeah.
Dr. Bill Andrews: And you know, there's gonna be a lot of overlap between different ways of getting cancer, but, but the big, the big thing that's missing in the field of cancer is what's common to all cancers and target that.
Okay. Well this is again, something that's been a very frustrating thing for me. Because part of why I became National Inventor of the year was discovering the thing that's in common to most cancers. The, the, the thing that's most common to all cancers, and that's the ability to keep telomeres from shortening because
Sawyer Stone: I see
Dr. Bill Andrews: shortening telomeres [00:46:00] will be a way to cause cancer.
Die from old age, essentially. And so in fact, if you have a cancer that's the size of a pimple, that cancer can't exist any longer because the telomeres got so short it can't divide any longer. But the problem is that because the telomeres got really short, mutation rates are skyrocketing. And so some of those cells inside that pimple are gonna mutate to a form that.
It suddenly doesn't require, uh, telomere or, well, it, it, it still can survive even with telomere shorten because now it's found ways to relink the telomeres. And so I mentioned before that I had, when I was back in my early days, came out with five different ways of curing, uh, curing cancer through, uh, telomers intervention.
Um, one of those which I call [00:47:00] toxic nucleotides. Is a way of, of, uh, not inhibiting telomerase. 'cause if you inhibit telomerase in cancer cells, so, so let's say the way that cancer becomes bigger than a pimple is to turn on the telomerase gene through mutations. Telomerase gene then keeps its ERs long, okay?
Mm-hmm. Inhibiting telomerase in cancer cells, which is what four of the five different things do, uh, will actually. Cause telomeres to get critically short cause mutation rates to skyrocket, and then the cancer develops alternate ways of keeping telomeres long. Most notably the alt pathway, a LT. That's what's happening a lot with like, uh, ello, which I had mentioned before.
Uh, cancers are coming back, uh, and they're now, their, their tumors are kept long by a process called the ALT pathway. And so what we need to do is figure out a way to. Poison [00:48:00] telomerase positive cells and alt positive cells, but that's requires too much discovery research and so nobody's providing the funding to do that.
It's been, I've had this on my list to do list for 30 years. I've spoken at cancer conferences looking for funding to do this research, but nobody wants to do it because there's, they're afraid that it's too much work, it's gonna cost too much, and it's not gonna be a quick return on investment. As much as just designing something from some stuff we already know, uh, which could al already work.
So it's, it's, um, the fact that cancers are so different and every cancer is different, has been a major obstacle to curing cancer. And it's, it's the number one reason why we haven't cured cancer. Well, number one reason be, besides, besides the funding issues. Uh, and, uh, so if. A nasa, okay. We [00:49:00] could get a NASA to focus on cancer.
We could get ca cancer because, because then we could cure cancer because then our efforts would be focused on a cure, not just profits. Mm. And uh, yeah, that's a good way to finish that, answering that question.
Sawyer Stone: No, I like it. Alright, well my last question for you is. And you sort of talked about this, it sounds like it's gonna be money.
What challenges exist in translating scientific discoveries into effective treatments for major diseases? Despite numerous breakthroughs in the labs? What obstacles prevent these findings from becoming widely available therapies?
Dr. Bill Andrews: The answer's the same as if I've been saying it's like funding, funding, funding.
It's usually, usually the scientists can discuss, can discover a mechanism. To cure a disease cure, but then they can't get the [00:50:00] funding to actually do the research to discover, so then, then it goes to applied research. They can't do the applied research or discovery research to find some way of affecting that pathway.
Yeah. Uh, and uh, that, I mean that this covers COVID vaccines, uh, cancer, heart disease. Um, you know, I, I said I'm a scientific advisor for several companies. They're all looking for funding to, to find ways to impede the biochemical pathway that they've discovered that plays a major role in the disease. And they can't, they can't get that because it's not quick enough return on investment.
Sawyer Stone: Yeah. Hmm. I hate that Funding is such a, a big issue and it does seem that enough people die. Frequently from cancer that somebody would put up the funding. But I guess you're right. It needs to be one of these people that has the funding and the ability to make the change to do it. [00:51:00] Maybe that requires somebody close to them being the first and effective,
Dr. Bill Andrews: first of all, they don't know that.
It depends on them. That's the big problem, right? They think everything is under control. They think that everybody's, all this money's being spent on. Curing cancer, things like that, somebody's gonna do it. Or they think because all this money has been done and cancer's not cured, maybe it's impossible.
Sawyer Stone: Right?
Dr. Bill Andrews: They're wrong, they're misled. Uh, and uh, the big campaign is if I had a trillion dollars, believe, I know cancer would be cured, heart disease would be cured, Alzheimer's would be cured, because my focus would be on just getting the cure, not, not. Not the prophets.
Sawyer Stone: Dr. Andrews, as we finish up, is there one current positive takeaway from current cancer research that you can share with us?
Dr. Bill Andrews: Yes. Cancer can be cured, heart disease can be cured, Alzheimer's can be cured. [00:52:00] I work with a lot of really excellent scientists in collaborations, or some of them work here and we know what to do. Science is not the obstacle. It's all funding. It's all funding. Getting, solving the funding problems. We could have cancer cured, heart disease, cured Alzheimer's, cured diabetes, cured I there, there's no end to the number of diseases that we could cure if the focus wasn't.
Totally on return on investment.
Sawyer Stone: Yeah. There's a more focus on the people with the disease. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you and thank you for your time today.
Thanks for joining us on Up One. If you found today's conversation valuable, be sure to subscribe and share this episode with someone who's curious about the real science behind help. [00:53:00]
Dr. Bill Andrews: Have a topic you want us to break down. Send us your questions. We're here to help you separate fact from fiction.
Sawyer Stone: Until next time, stay curious, stay informed, and let's keep taking it Up One.