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Gut Check Project
Trailer
Bonus
Episode 53
Season 1
Who is at Risk for Colon Cancer?
Eric Rieger 0:00
Hello gut check project fans and KB MD health family. Thank you so much for joining us. This is episode number 41. I'm Eric rigger here with my co host, Dr. Kenneth Brown. How
Ken Brown 0:11
are you doing Dr. Brown? I'm doing great, Eric. Episode 41. We're back to check project we kind of dabble between COVID this one is not it's not a COVID episode. This one's gonna be a very informative episode. And it might not be the most lighthearted topic. It might not be something but it's going to save lives. So I want anyone who's listening to this to realize what we're going to talk about is something that's pertinent in the in the media right now, and we're going to help people and that's a little teaser.
Eric Rieger 0:44
Well, so a couple weeks ago, what prompted where we are today is Chadwick boseman. Young man actor. He succumbed to colon cancer now. He has a different story that talks about how he kept it under wraps and really No one knew that he was sick and he battled this issue after being diagnosed with stage three colon cancer. He dealt with it for four years. And really it's kind of remarkable how he just wanted to go on living a normal life and and you know, Godspeed to to him and his family. What a what a hard thing to do but what a soldier he was for him and his family to carry on and try to live a very normal life. But really what it did for me being that I'm I'll turn 45 this year. It made me look at myself and my friends and just be reminded that young and younger people are being diagnosed with colorectal cancer. And it's happening at a large clip far more frequently than it did decades ago. And we'll use and I think that you will also will use around 1990 ish is kind of a marker or delineation of when things started to change in these trends. But why don't you tell me Can what you think whenever you've begun to notice the trend of younger and younger adults showing up for colonoscopies and we've, we've, we've found cancer, we found cancer together with some of our own patients.
Ken Brown 2:18
You know, you and I were talking about this and All right, so first of all, Chadwick boseman. I think one of the things about his very tragic death is what a badass. Okay? This is a guy that can act at a level that very few can get to. This is a guy that I mean, the the movies he's been in the people he's portrayed, he's been amazing and then to find out later that he was actually dealing with some of the stuff while it was going on. Absolute badass and leisure. While he was essentially dying. He was doing charitable work going out meeting with children. We're dying and everything and never once was like, Hey, this is what I'm doing. This all came out after his death. That is so amazing. And you and I were talking and I'm like, Oh my god, I did this article came out this article came out and you told me you're like, Hey, I was listening to the radio. And they were talking about Chadwick. And I really feel like he was a gastroenterologists and me as somebody that puts these people to sleep. We have to do this. And I was like, Yeah, but everybody was doing it. And you're like, No, we just need to do this because it's there. And now when I sit there and look back at how I have been trying to fight colon cancer, I'm like, wow, one of the greatest people that could move this topic that we're going to talk about, which is why in the world that a 43 year old man died of colon cancer. I want to give a why to that. Yeah, we're going to talk about today
Eric Rieger 3:58
without questions. So it's there's really no right way to set the table here. And so forgive us here on the show if we kind of jump at different ways on how to approach this issue or colorectal cancer has been appearing far more frequently in the last two and a half decades for younger people and by younger people. It's not or it wasn't, it wasn't normal for people to have colorectal cancer before the age of 40 at all. And and now, we've seen in the last few years where the screening age has moved basically for all insurance carriers from 50 down to 45. And this is to basically capture those who need preventative intervention before it's too late. And go ahead.
Ken Brown 4:44
Oh, no, I was just gonna say that's exactly it. You and I live this world. We talk it all the time. And now because a super likable, lovable person that was taken before his time brings light to something You and I talk about every single day, we screen people young, we find young cancers. So for me, it's like, that's, it's horrible that that happened. But we want to prevent it. And that's what this show is about. It's about finding the science, it's about talking about it. And maybe even if just one person sends their child to go get screened sooner, even if just one person listen to this, says, you know, what I've been ignoring the symptoms of my stool looks a little different, meaning it's narrow, possibly, there's little bit of blood on the toilet paper, possibly, there's something else well, then everything that we do is worth it because we have one person to go ask their doctor and say, I want to make a change. Chadwick boseman, was a tragic death. But the problem is, is that this is a trend of a growing number of people below the age of 50, who are developing colon cancer, and he had stage four colon cancer. This is horrific, it's horrible. And as two people that prevent this cancer. It's, it's, it's a timing thing. And that's what this is about.
Eric Rieger 6:08
No question and this isn't isolated and he's not even remotely the first high profile person to die at a young age from colon cancer. If we all know who Katie Couric is her husband, James Monaghan, he died at the age of 42. In fact, I think the the GI Center in New York affiliate with the Presbyterian Hospital, there's actually named for him cheap, donated quite a bit of money to help them advance the research not only for colorectal cancer, but to start the trend of people starting to detect it earlier. So honestly, kudos to Katie Couric and and the foresight that she saw that my husband should not have died from this and he shouldn't have. We just didn't know that someone is at that age at the age of 42. Back then, which has been over 20 years ago. Yeah, that could have that could have happened. So let's get down to some of the many different things that maybe could contribute to why someone wouldn't go get checked, I'm going to leave the science part of discovering the colon cancer to you. But as someone who's 44, what are some of the reasons why someone might not go when they should go. And we'll get to the symptoms a little bit, but there's just some, some normal or abnormal things that have had have occurred over the last few years that may be contributing. Our sources of food have continuously changed quite a bit as a person who was born in the 70s. And a kid of the 80s best food was normal in learning about GMOs. Who knows no one's really made all of the connections and of course, there's a lobby that wants is more or less to somewhat ignore some of the things that could be the the key factors to allow Our body to grow these tumors etc. So, there's no doubt though, that if you were to compare my childhood with my parents who their generation does not have a high incidence of colorectal cancer, when they were in their 40s, there's obviously some type of environmental change, somehow. And I would say that food may have played a part and then there's some other things. One would be males. Traditionally, males just don't go to the doctor when there's signs and symptoms that should be sending them there. I mean, we know that here with with artron to our biggest purchasers of artron. teal, are women. Even if it's for the men in their lives, they actually are the ones who purchase are drawn to more often because they recognize the symptoms and they know that something number one should be done about it. And number two, we'll do the investigation to find out what can be done. It's just it's just facts, but something else that happened was really, really eye catching and a lot went back to that radio program that we were listening to.
Ken Brown 9:04
Yeah, so let me just stop right there because this actually started it. Tell me about the station you listen to and what they were talking about you showed up to work. So one of the beauty I was gonna say one of the beauties I should be one of the beautiful things that happens with you and I work together in one job where we take care of patients and we work together another job, but we've got this business, right, we're helping improve longevity, health, anti aging, all this stuff without trying to but when you showed up that day, you're like, hey, on the and I'll just let you run with it. Because when you start talking about it, I went,
Eric Rieger 9:42
Wow, that's cool. So I often hear in DFW Dallas Fort Worth, I listen quite often to the ticket. It's a long time standing sports radio station. However, if you're passing through if you've never listened to before, it's quite common that it's really just guy talk and They of course have Yeah, they they have sports that they feature on there but for for I would say most of the programming it's really just funny stuff that guys find funny and or interesting. But on my drive in sounds like cast. Yeah. does sound a lot like our podcast
Ken Brown 10:22
but on my drive into work they make fun of my vlogs a little on their on the ticket because we do that occasionally.
Eric Rieger 10:28
Yeah. Mike if they knew you, you know they would so or if they covered jujitsu, they could probably have have Mike on there. I've got a story
Ken Brown 10:35
about that related to this. So yeah, I'm gonna we're gonna tie all this in. It's all coming in. It's all gonna come
Eric Rieger 10:41
together. A lot of loose strings here, folks, but we're going to pull this together I promise. So all my drive into work. Then users, which is the early morning program, Jr. Miller, who's one of the hosts happened to be reading about how blown away he was. A Chadwick boseman his demise and he is One who has openly expressed that he's dealt with various digestive issues. He's a super athlete. He's a cyclist, a long distance runner has been for years very, very, very fit. But he has always been very, very in tune with what he perceives his body does best with diet, sleep, exercise, etc. Well, he began to read through a few different stats and statistics and most of them weren't that surprising about the mail about the changing in our food, but one of them was just in arguably, it's like, we've got to do something different here. We've got to tell people to go and get help. What he mentioned was a study that they had done over thousands of different patients on the average time from the symptoms. So that could be bloody stool or diarrhea, change in bowel habits, etc. And I'll let cannot let you get to that in a moment. But when the onset of symptoms First occur to the time of diagnosis. They used a marker at the age of 50. So if you were younger than 50, the time from the first onset of a symptom to the day of diagnosis was roughly 217 days. So let's just say that on the first day, there was a there was blood in the stool. It's on average, which means some people go much, much longer, on average, 217 days for someone under the age of 50, to go and see a doctor, then be diagnosed that they actually have colorectal cancer. Now, just compare and contrast that to 50 and above. It's just under 30 days, it's like 29 point something days. That amount of time is critical. It's almost one full or it's almost one or 10 times The amount of days over it's like roughly eight point something times. And in that amount of time cancer is that's just allowing cancer to go and recruit more cells and area for to continually grow and become far more cumbersome and unfortunately spread. That's when it becomes dangerous. So when I've told you that number, I can remember you looking at me this was just a weekend half ago, two weeks ago, looking at me saying, Wait, what did you say? And I said, they just said it. That's what's on my mind. 217 days versus 29. That's, that's really life and death. And it's just an amount of time where people didn't take the symptoms seriously enough to go and seek help from the right person. And then the next thing What if they did go and see a doctor? And what if they didn't happen to go to a gastroenterologist right away, but now you've got a smaller caveat that still some people Certainly don't mean any harm, but it's just not normal for someone to show up at the age of 34 or 29 stained, they've got blood and stool. Oh, we had a small interruption there regardless. So, in essence what we have are these people are young adults, and they have been ignoring symptoms, but now they've gone to go and find someone to help them. There's another caveat here. Sometimes the person they go to may not be a gastroenterologist and is probably just not used to seeing someone who is young, having cancer. So oftentimes, when a young person goes, What's contributing to that high number that 217 days, they may go to a doctor and say, I've experienced some rectal bleeding. I think I've seen some blood in his stool. Not always, but sometimes Someone may say, Well, you're 29 you're, you're 33 it's just not normal for someone your age to have cancer. Let's see if this resolves. Let's, you know, check a blood level to make certain that you're not anemic, etc. But it's just one more small thing that will delay diagnosis. And that's the problem. And can you know this if it's, if it's going to be more time, unfortunately, it's just more time for the cancer to take hold and be more difficult to combat.
Ken Brown 15:21
Alright, so you're exactly right. And this just shows that sharing information. You heard this on a radio station into work to work with me, right? We talked about it, we're like, oh my gosh, so I started looking into this. And it's estimated that 12% of all colon cancers will be in people younger than age 50.
Eric Rieger 15:40
Wow.
Ken Brown 15:41
Age 50 has been the screening recommendation. For many years, the screening recommendation, spoiler alert has now been moved to 45. And so we'll get into all of that later. But the most important thing for me is that that means that 18,000 people will end up with colon cancer below. The age of 50 this year that may ignore symptoms. And when we talk about different races, unfortunately, African Americans are at a 20% higher risk,
Eric Rieger 16:14
correct
Ken Brown 16:14
into a lot of different things about health care, availability, about different things like that. But this is our job is to prevent that. And then now there's studies showing that younger people have much more aggressive cancer also much more aggressive cancer with a worse prognosis. A survey was published in 2019 that found that 67% of colon cancer patients saw at least two doctors, many saw four doctors before a colonoscopy was recommended. So everything that you're saying is totally backed by science. Patients will often ignore the symptoms as well, as the doctors will downplay the symptoms that were reassurance which Generally, is the way I was taught. But now we're seeing the shift. Now we realize the youngest person I've ever diagnosed with colon cancer was 19, the oldest person was 89, where it was treated, meaning we treated it and cured it.
Eric Rieger 17:16
Right?
Ken Brown 17:17
So I have a 19 year old kid with rectal bleeding. And I said, Hey, we should just take a look anyways, found rectal cancer, and 89 year old, I was like, we really shouldn't do this at your age. But,
Eric Rieger 17:29
and let's highlight something really quick. You don't traditionally see anybody who's under 18. So the margin of how low that could even go for you is one year. So you've basically hit the entire span of your patient population that you routinely See, which is thousands of patients a year. You basically seen colon cancer as young as they come. And it should be alarming.
Ken Brown 17:54
It's it's super alarming because think about this now for if you're an individual is what it is. If you're a healthcare provider if you're an insurance provider, oh yeah, you're part of the healthcare system if this trend continues by 2030, so nine years from now, we're going to end up or 10 years from now, but somehow had 2021 of my I'm just trying to get rid of 2020 so fast, I just done with it,
Eric Rieger 18:31
understand and do.
Ken Brown 18:33
So, in 2030 32% of all colorectal cancers diagnosed will be in people younger than age 50. If we allow this to continue, now, if we allow this to continue now, three years ago, do you remember that when Ricardo Brey so Ricardo Brey was a good friend, he has a jujitsu gym, he's a he's a world champion in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I was so taken Backed by a study that was published in 2017, that showed for the first time ever, a younger generation was developing cancer in higher proportions than their parents. And so Millennials are having more colorectal cancer than their parents. that's never been seen before in any other generation. I went so far as to bring Jiu Jitsu mats and we brought Ricardo Brio. I encourage everybody to go to my YouTube page, Kenneth brown MD, where you can see Ricardo basically kicked my ass in the name of colon cancer, which is if if you're watching it, he throws me around like I'm like, like 90 pounds. At that time. I think I was 215 I mean, I'm 215 now so I was a little bit thicker. I was like, stronger back then I was working out more because COVID got in the way of things, but I was solid 215 220 back then, and he picked me up like I'm nothing. That's what we want to do. We want to cut out polyps like they're nothing so that people do not develop any type of cancer and that's what something like this so if you're bored even if you don't enjoy talking about colon cancer you can see me get my ass kicked by Ricardo so
Eric Rieger 20:10
well and it was it was a it was a fun taping and I love the way that that Ricardo was screaming out and not calling you can or Dr. Brown I just kept calling you polyp as he was chasing
Ken Brown 20:20
you. Yes. kept calling me polyp. So you're exactly right you show up listening to this very unfortunate Chadwick boseman passed away of stage four colon cancer, our job, literally Our job is to prevent this. That's what we do every single day.
Eric Rieger 20:39
And and just to put it into context, it's not your exactly run about the more aggressive nature because sometimes in some instances, some people may say that, well, there's an increase in cancer but but not so much death if this is not the case. There is a belief set from the American Cancer Society there's a 51% Increase, and young cancer patients under the age of 50. Since only 1994, it's only 26 years ago. And knowing that the death rates in this group are also rising death rate meaning more good notes with cancer ended up dying than those who are but a per per person per diagnosis are dying versus those who are diagnosed in the pool 15 above. So much of that is just timing. They are more aggressive. So it's just that much more important that we figure out the first onset symptom to go to someone who will be aggressive and making certain that you don't have something more sinister or serious than
Ken Brown 21:48
I can believe it's up to you. So the people that have attention deficit disorder and want to get off, what are the symptoms they should look for and if you have any of these symptoms, just talk to your doctor. I heard a podcast where even if your doctor says Don't worry about it, I'm gonna worry about it send me to a gastroenterologist. What
Eric Rieger 22:06
are those symptoms? No, it's always going to be blood in the stool. And that could be a dark Tari stool out of out of nowhere and sometimes honestly, they kind of steak bleeding from in and around the rectum. So bright red blood on the toilet paper or in the air or in the stool, definitely, and abdominal cramping. So sometimes if in Tell me if that's wrong, but I think sometimes when we've had folks they've had kind of unrelenting cramping and they don't know how to describe it. And I've often seen you start with them before they are before we actually do the procedure and try to get them to kind of localize it or show you where it is. So abdominal
Ken Brown 22:47
discomfort is is something so bleeding, abdominal discomfort, and talk about the stool. ribbon stools is what I'm getting at
Eric Rieger 22:54
here. Yeah, ribbon stools, and basically it's basically a change in the shape of the stool. itself because it will come out kind of flattened or something like that it's mechanical, it means there's a polyp or something causing an obstruction and pushing on it.
Ken Brown 23:09
And then if you're a family reunion and you bump into aunt Betsy, who says, Yeah, just had like colon cancer removed.
Eric Rieger 23:17
Yeah, if you've got a family member, and no more than two removed, you definitely want to be checked out and early. Don't wait.
Ken Brown 23:25
So these are all Googleable, but this podcast is about trying to figure out the next level. So the question is why. So the study that was done in 2017, the authors of the study, you know, the the main finding was that millennials have higher incidence of colon cancer than their parents. Their conclusion was, we don't understand why.
Eric Rieger 23:46
Sure.
Ken Brown 23:47
So I started looking at this when you said that about listened to the ticket. So why, and I started thinking you said at the beginning of this show, our diets have changed, things have happened, whatever. So Let's talk about that. Okay, let's talk about possibly why. Now, this is not my research. This is me looking at other scientists that have done this. But as we always do, if it makes clinical sense, and physiologically I see it that the body can do this. And then anecdotally, I see it in my practice, I feel very strongly that these kind of things correlate. So even if somebody says, well, there's no large randomized placebo controlled trial on this, and that, if it makes sense, and we see it on a day to day basis, if I had the time, I would publish the two together. And that's what we're doing right now. This is a unpublished study in the form of a podcast, where we get to look at your beautiful hair while we do
Eric Rieger 24:53
I mean, debatable, depending on who you're asking. Alright,
Ken Brown 24:56
so you got me thinking about this. And so I started finding some different studies. And so I thought A study that really looked at younger people that ate high fat food and high carbohydrate food. So whenever we talk about the standard American diet, the sad diet, it's, it's it's the two together. It's not that one is bad or the other is bad. But somehow when you combined refined carbohydrates with poor fats, it's a it's a recipe for disaster. And that unfortunately, is what most of the food that is easily accessible for a lot of people. So high fat, high carb study in younger people showed something kind of interesting, significant dysbiosis meaning it affected their micro biome. So their micro biome.com got changed and became very narrow. On other podcasts. We talked about the microbial diversity, meaning you want to have a lot of different ones when you eat a high fat high carbohydrate refined diet, you narrow your microbiome, they linked this to causing obesity. In the original 2017 study, they tried to say that maybe it's obesity causing the cancer. And so the key is that the dysbiosis can alter an epigenetic phenomenon. And what that means is your microbiome can turn on genes in your body. Keep that in mind. So the microbiome is super important. And then I started thinking, well, is this just a US phenomenon? Found multiple studies in other countries where they're having increased risk of colon cancer as well with that? So this got me thinking. And at least there's a clue to all of this. If the microbiome plays a role, and we know that when you disrupt the microbiome, you epi genetically predisposed to forming pre cancerous lesions, right? polyps. So that's what you and I do for a living, we remove polyps and that effectively cures colon cancer. A really interesting study came out in 2019 in March where they looked at mice and you and I talked about this because I threw a fit that one day at the endo center where we offer sodas, pops or cokes depending on your vernacular and what part of the country you're at. If you're in the Midwest, I guess it's a pop sodas northeast coke South Georgia, Georgia southeast Yeah.
Eric Rieger 27:38
Oh, and just so y'all know, this is this is just water. This is Waterloo. Yeah.
Ken Brown 27:46
Yeah, I'm pretty. I'm pretty adamant. So if you're a parent and you're listening to this, pay very close attention to this part, because nobody's discussing why Millennials are having higher colon cancer and I'm trying to figure it out. One way The hint is it affects the microbiome. I'm not feeding your microbiome, the appropriate thing it predisposes you to polyps. Then using that logic, a group of scientists took mice that were knockout mice, meaning that they were predisposed to having polyps. And then what they did is they gave them the equivalent of one can of soda of high fructose corn syrup. So basically the amount of high fructose corn syrup and one can of soda, they get to the mice daily, not like a whole can to a mouse, the equivalent of a tiny little can to a mouse relative to what a human would drink if they drank a what, however many ounces how many ounces is that Waterloo, that you're in that eight? Well, thanks 12 Yeah, so 12 ounce can and so they figured out that polyps love high fructose corn syrup cancers And polyps then when I say polyps What I mean is early cancer. So that goes with all cancers, colon cancers, the thing we're talking about today, this goes with all cancers. Cancers love sugar, they love the fuel, they grow quicker than your other cells, they need that fuel. So these guys showed that when you give high fructose corn syrup, the rates of cancer and polyps was super high compared to those that did not get the high fructose corn syrup. And they even thought about the whole obesity thing. And they said, No, we're only going to give one can these mice will not become obese. We're just going to see what just the high fructose corn syrup does. And what they showed is that when you eat fructose, unlike glucose, glucose is imported into the cell through a glucose transporter frutos is passively absorbed. through what's called the glute five transport system. Why is that relevant? As it turns out, you can overwhelm the glute five transport system really easy. So if you're like, Ah, he's been too nerdy about this stuff. If you happen to be a triathlete or a marathon runner and you're on your run drinking guru trying to give yourself energy, because it was always shown that fructose can be absorbed quicker, and then you'd end up having diarrhea. After the second or third pack of this. You've overwhelmed your, your fruit dose absorption ability. problem is when you have high fructose corn syrup, which is a refined form of fructose, which is a whole separate discussion on how maybe that is the root cause of a lot of our, our metabolic syndrome probably. Yeah, so this blew my mind when You drink too much. And it's not very much at all. I'm talking less than a can a day. That fructose doesn't get absorbed. The high fructose corn syrup doesn't get absorbed and goes to your colon and digested where they showed. That's where polyps and cancers adapt. They love that stuff. And they say, bring it here, bring it here. I want that. And so now we bring the microbiome back in. Now we've got a microbiome that's being fed high fructose corn syrup, they start sending signals to the brain that says we want more of that. The polyp is like, Oh, yeah, we want more of that also. Oh, yeah. And these researchers showed that the that the fruit dose gets converted into a fatty acid that promotes tumor growth. In fact, it'll actually read wire the polyp to the point that it will prefer high fructose corn syrup. So if you are doing this on a regular basis, you're setting yourself up for a serious problem. They have shown that there's actually something called the Warburg effect. And the Warburg effect increases something called glycolysis, which leads to increase fatty acids in these tumors, which promotes metastasis. Remember, so metastatic disease is the spread of a spread of cancer. Yeah, spread of cancer. So it's the beginning of this. We're talking about a very young, incredible actor who developed colon cancer and then we said that it's more aggressive. And then the studies where they looked at it said, we don't know why. I don't know if they have Not looked at this yet. Is it possible that part of the standard American diet, which uses high fructose corn syrup, not just in sodas, oh, everywhere, every read, it's in freakin bread. If you open a package, you're getting high fructose corn syrup.
Eric Rieger 33:17
Yeah.
Ken Brown 33:18
So if you're a parent, and you're listening to this, for gosh sakes, don't allow your kids to have sodas, pops, coach, whatever it is, that is your vernacular. Stop that right now. Because what you're doing is you're allowing your, you're allowing your kids microbiome to change to want more of it, which then tells the polyps, they change, to preferentially metabolize that grow and spread. When we sit there and say that we're, it's Think of it as a parasite power In cancers are parasites, do you feed the parasite to allow it to grow? Or do you starve the parasite? So it goes away? We tend to feed these parasites that grow. And if somebody says, Oh, well, it's probably because the obesity which is the whole thing, everybody goes back to obesity. Oh, it's obesity must be because Americans are are overweight. There was a 2019 study that published that showed overweight obese teenagers had a depletion of beneficial bacteria. And they had dysbiosis. Yeah, I personally think as a gastroenterologist that what we're doing is we're self selecting bad bacteria narrowing the microbiome, and then that microbiome gives us clues to go out and have more of this. They send signals to your brain that says we want more sugar. The easiest quickest sugar to get is high fructose corn syrup. So It's kind of a trick because I'm sitting there, we started out talking about young people having colon cancer. And then the question was always, how does this happen? So, I truly believe that if you protect your microbiome, and you avoid some very simple things, and then you go, oh, when I start looking at labels, it's a whole lot harder than what it looks because if you're if you're OPG, if you're opening packages, you're getting high fructose corn syrup. And it's I just found it interesting because
Eric Rieger 35:35
it's sad. It's sad that it's that it's crept into our normal normal eating habits. I mean, it really really is and not we're not innocent in our house I I try in most cases we're successful with the boys that they don't consume it but you it's it's difficult and what's crazy is I think that my both of my sons incidence of consuming high fructose corn syrup is a fraction to probably their peers, but it doesn't really matter. And then you put it best when you said, should you feed the parasite or deny its ability to grow? And what's kind of crazy is that I think that even in the back of our minds, some people have justified allowing an action thinking, well, if there's ever a consequence, there'll be so much further down the road that things may be different at that point. This is the bell. People are getting cancer much earlier and is in a system that they never had it before. So things are different. If you have a child.
Ken Brown 36:41
I don't care how old that child is. And you look over right now and they're sticking a straw in a juicy box. They're cracking up a soda they're doing over grab that thing. Look and see if there is high fructose corn syrup in it. Because or even sugar, lots of sugar but the sugar is The kicker about the high fructose corn syrup is that they these guys figured out that what ends up happening is that the, the polyp in the tumor prefers it and they end up converting it quicker of these very detrimental molecules. You're better off doing straight sugar than y'all are doing high fructose corn syrup in regards to colon cancer in probably all cancers, because it Now the one thing that is really unique about this study is that if you overwhelm your body's ability to absorb it, then you're going to preferentially feed the colon polyps because it's going to go to your colon,
Eric Rieger 37:42
it's leftover you leftover. You can't use it, the cancer will love it. And make no mistake when at least the way that I've always understood tumor growth. It's it's growing. It's growing rapidly. It's it's a high metabolism set. Have cells which are doing all they can to grow and expand. And what they're also doing is creating more pathways for blood vessels to form called angiogenesis but blood vessels so that they can get their hands on free energy. Guess what high fructose corn syrup is? It's just free energy to them, and allow them to even grow faster, to grow bigger.
Ken Brown 38:25
And oh, it's not free energy. It's turbo. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's terrible. It's what they want. They're like, Yeah, let's do this. So if you happen to be African American, you have a higher risk. If you happen to have anybody in your family first or second degree generation that had polyps or colon cancer, it's higher risk. So if you're turning around right now and you had a colonoscopy, you're like, I'm fine. I'm 50. You look at your kids and you go, they're at higher risk. Holy cow. I had my colonoscopy. I'm a responsible adults. I'm 50 years old, had the colonoscopy, and I look over at my 15 year old I'm like, Oh, no. Wait a minute, they're at higher risk than I am. Yeah, this is nuts. We've never had this discussion with kids before.
Eric Rieger 39:07
No, No, we haven't. And and I'm do so by the end of the year I'm doing I'll be 45 I hit the new threshold. Thankfully, they've moved it back five years and I haven't had any symptoms that if I have I mean, guess what, I wouldn't be any different. I would have been someone who's ignored and not paid attention or, or something like that. But I don't believe that I've had a symptom yet. I haven't had a close family member yet. That's sad. But all that being said, I am keenly aware that my environment my food supply is honestly it's it was vastly different as a young person than what my parents had fast foods. and different things like high fructose corn syrup are far more abundant.
Ken Brown 39:55
What was the whole thing you were talking about the original Dr. Pepper that that one town in Texas we were just talking about?
Eric Rieger 39:59
Oh, Dublin. Yeah, Dublin, Texas had the, to my knowledge, the last location of where Dr. Pepper was still made with real sugar at least domestically, right? Yeah. And they produced it and Dr. Pepper ended up shutting them down I guess about six or seven years ago. And it was because they began to distribute what they called the Dublin Dr. Pepper to other retailers and they didn't want them to do that because essentially it was competing with with the the main source licensed bottlers. So Dublin still produces sugar containing sodas, but they don't use high fructose corn syrup. I don't drink sodas at all, so directly doesn't affect me, but I'm with you. If you're going to still consume sodas, number one, limit them but number two, try to find somebody who doesn't have high fructose corn syrup.
Ken Brown 40:56
I'm guilty of this in the sense that I don't drink sodas but if I But if i put a condiment on something, a hamburger or something I'm eating I don't I don't look at the label and go oh my gosh, then you start looking and they all got it. They all got it. They all got it like okay, just know every single time it's okay everything you know we get the back to the moderation thing but just know if you got a critter grown in ya, if you got a little parasite called a colon polyp, and you're doing that it's loving it and growing.
Eric Rieger 41:23
And definitely Oh, you know, it's gonna be I know what else inside knows some of your favorite brands. If you said comment on burger This is perfect. Some of America's favorite brands like Heinz ketchup, for instance, they've actually been listening. And it's not the biggest seller yet but even even it on the shelves of Walmart, they oftentimes will feature either organic or no high fructose corn syrup ketchup. So some of these brands really do want to help make the change that the truth is until more people buy them and consume them. They're not going to produce them. They are a company like anything else. They want to see the numbers. They want to see if it latches on. If it resonates with people and that thing, oftentimes people don't. They don't appreciate that there's a new choice out there and how important it is to be made aware of why there is a healthier option offered a job, because I'm like this.
Ken Brown 42:20
Yeah, let's just reiterate. let's just recap what just happened on this because I think generally you and I joke around a little bit more on this podcast, but this is not a joking matter. Now, you got a situation where a cancer a generation before is now having higher incidences of a cancer that we thought was an older person's cancer. Yeah. Why is that? Who knows? I believe that there is data to suggest that consuming certain foods affects that. One of those things could be high fructose corn syrup, and making sure that you have proper microbial diversity meaning feed your microbiome. what it wants with polyphenols, insoluble fibers, the stuff that we talk about every single show. Now we're talking about here's how to save not just your life, but the next generation,
Eric Rieger 43:15
your kids without question your kids. Well, what a, it. I'm glad that the ticket had this topic. This is something that we will probably even have to touch on again. But it's Make no mistake. It's always alarming when someone comes through and they're on their follow up colonoscopy with us because they've just beaten cancer and you look and their age and I'm thinking of someone in particular is only 26. It doesn't. It's It's It's not fair, but I'm glad that that person didn't ignore the signals from three years ago. And that person is more than likely and wasn't out of shape wasn't obese. You don't have to be obese. You don't have to do a lot of Things Oh, I think
Ken Brown 44:00
that's what I think that's what took everybody back with Chadwick. Yeah, this is a is a solid fit Dude, that got taken down by stage four colon cancer. And you know, it's part of our humanity to say, well, it's not going to be me but as a physician and you in healthcare that puts people to sleep, we see stuff and we just go it's it can happen to anybody. So why would you stack the deck against yourself when it's so easy to do a couple simple changes. So we're gonna do this. Just don't drink sodas. Please do me one favor, just don't drink sodas.
Eric Rieger 44:41
Challenge yourself, see how good your pantry see how many things may you go to throw everything out but be conscious of it whenever you go shopping again. I mean, it's it's, it's hard. I mean, it's not easy to go and tell everyone to turn over all of their their food inventory. But for The most part eating fresh vegetables and meat, it may sound boring, but there's there's a reason behind it. And yeah,
Ken Brown 45:05
yeah, you're for it. And so I had this argument with somebody who just woke up and post off of this week actually, we got the same discussion. And she, she said, Can I have my Can I have my diet Doc, Diet Coke, whatever. It doesn't matter what brand. I think it was Diet Coke. And then I was like, ah, just as bad. And that's another thing that people don't realize, remember when I was on my microbiome? Oh, yeah. now realize that people that drink diet soda. So if you're over here going, Oh, thank God, I don't have any of the regular stuff. Guess what the preservatives and the sugar sweeteners in there, you don't absorb your microbiome breaks it down. And you have a higher incidence of getting obese and having type two diabetes, if you do the fake stuff, so you're not getting out of the woods on that one either. Not only that
Eric Rieger 45:56
you actually and completely not even gi related diets. Is contribute to the imbalance of phosphorus and calcium in the body. You actually can it can induce early stage onset of osteoporosis. I mean, it's, it's not your friend, I don't know. Tell us to say it. It's it's not you're rolling the dice
Ken Brown 46:18
when we sat there talking about this if you were if you were submitting a diet soda to the FDA is a drug you're like, Ah, this drugs you know, they were rejected and say you're gonna cause more harm than good
Eric Rieger 46:30
unless their lobby was really strong. Well, hey, Ken has always certainly appreciate it. That's really all that we have for young people and colon cancer get. Don't ignore the symptoms. Again, those symptoms are blood and stool bleeding from the rectum the abdominal cramping. If you have a family member blood family member that has had colon cancer problems like that before
Ken Brown 46:54
or polyps or polyps.
Eric Rieger 46:56
Uh, yeah, polyps Thank you. Don't ignore it. Don't ignore It
Ken Brown 47:00
ranges to caliber abdominal discomfort if you have this it is your right to talk to your doctor about it and it's also your right to go I'm I would like this evaluated because peace of mind and Oh, totally forgot my colonoscopy is on YouTube we put it there so that you can see that it's not a big deal. So I would like to put to the audience there. How should we do Eric's colonoscopy? Should we fill it live? Should we do it with lubrication Should we do it with sedation? Let's uh you know, I see you as the David Blaine of colonoscopies where Yeah, well I'm gonna make a
Eric Rieger 47:40
I'm really glad that we talked about all of this stuff beforehand.
Ken Brown 47:44
I think that we could top David Blaine's little holding on to the balloon thing we could do it 15,000 feet possibly
Eric Rieger 47:54
chair that imagine will probably live streaming on some platforms. I'm not familiar with like Myspace. A Snapchat so we'll just see what happens.
Ken Brown 48:05
Regardless, I think I'm doing for my colonoscopy this year your do Dr. ackermans. Do a guest you know the, the Yeah, substitute co host. He's do we should have a colonoscopy Palooza someday where we just show. I mean, we both try to practice what we preach. And I try for the most part eating healthy, unfortunately. Oh my. Did we comment on my tie dye shirt here? Yeah,
Eric Rieger 48:31
not yet. But you is that does that done by the famous Carla
Ken Brown 48:35
as some of the famous Carla who also happens during COVID to becoming a badass Baker. And so I sit there and say that I practice what I preach, but when I come home from work, and she's like, Look, Bobby I made lemon bars and you know, it's your daughter offering it to you and you're like, Okay, I'll humor you and you're like, oh, they're so good.
Eric Rieger 48:54
is with real sugar
Ken Brown 48:57
with real sugar, which is also something that I try to actively avoid but when your sugary little daughter offers it to you and she worked hard at it, you'd it's hard to ignore. And then you're like, Oh, it's got a shirt. She's like, Can I tie it? And I was like, Yeah, whatever. I'll throw it out. I'm like, Oh, it looks awesome. I love it. I'm gonna wear
Eric Rieger 49:14
a Carla in your daughter should also know that you get comments every Friday that you wear those tie dye scrubs, everyone loves them. Those are awesome. Well, I think that'll do it. Please Like and Share. If you've got a younger family member that you just want them to be aware of this, send it to them, send them this video. Hopefully we can just get through to them. It just takes a little bit of time. They don't even have to watch the whole thing to start getting the gist of the information. But anyhow, so gut check project, Episode Number 41. Young people, unfortunately was showing up with colorectal cancer too. If you get symptoms, go get checked out like and share, check out our sponsors, Dr. Brown anything else?
Ken Brown 49:54
No, that's it. I just think that it's a I consider it an honor that you and I get The opportunity to save lives the way that we do I consider it an honor that we can be on a platform like this and tell people because once again, one person thinks of something and says, You know what, I'm gonna go ahead and do that, then it's all worth it.
Eric Rieger 50:14
Yep, absolutely. We'll see y'all next time. That was Episode 41. Take care.
Ken Brown 50:18
Take care.
Hello gut check project fans and KB MD health family. Thank you so much for joining us. This is episode number 41. I'm Eric rigger here with my co host, Dr. Kenneth Brown. How
Ken Brown 0:11
are you doing Dr. Brown? I'm doing great, Eric. Episode 41. We're back to check project we kind of dabble between COVID this one is not it's not a COVID episode. This one's gonna be a very informative episode. And it might not be the most lighthearted topic. It might not be something but it's going to save lives. So I want anyone who's listening to this to realize what we're going to talk about is something that's pertinent in the in the media right now, and we're going to help people and that's a little teaser.
Eric Rieger 0:44
Well, so a couple weeks ago, what prompted where we are today is Chadwick boseman. Young man actor. He succumbed to colon cancer now. He has a different story that talks about how he kept it under wraps and really No one knew that he was sick and he battled this issue after being diagnosed with stage three colon cancer. He dealt with it for four years. And really it's kind of remarkable how he just wanted to go on living a normal life and and you know, Godspeed to to him and his family. What a what a hard thing to do but what a soldier he was for him and his family to carry on and try to live a very normal life. But really what it did for me being that I'm I'll turn 45 this year. It made me look at myself and my friends and just be reminded that young and younger people are being diagnosed with colorectal cancer. And it's happening at a large clip far more frequently than it did decades ago. And we'll use and I think that you will also will use around 1990 ish is kind of a marker or delineation of when things started to change in these trends. But why don't you tell me Can what you think whenever you've begun to notice the trend of younger and younger adults showing up for colonoscopies and we've, we've, we've found cancer, we found cancer together with some of our own patients.
Ken Brown 2:18
You know, you and I were talking about this and All right, so first of all, Chadwick boseman. I think one of the things about his very tragic death is what a badass. Okay? This is a guy that can act at a level that very few can get to. This is a guy that I mean, the the movies he's been in the people he's portrayed, he's been amazing and then to find out later that he was actually dealing with some of the stuff while it was going on. Absolute badass and leisure. While he was essentially dying. He was doing charitable work going out meeting with children. We're dying and everything and never once was like, Hey, this is what I'm doing. This all came out after his death. That is so amazing. And you and I were talking and I'm like, Oh my god, I did this article came out this article came out and you told me you're like, Hey, I was listening to the radio. And they were talking about Chadwick. And I really feel like he was a gastroenterologists and me as somebody that puts these people to sleep. We have to do this. And I was like, Yeah, but everybody was doing it. And you're like, No, we just need to do this because it's there. And now when I sit there and look back at how I have been trying to fight colon cancer, I'm like, wow, one of the greatest people that could move this topic that we're going to talk about, which is why in the world that a 43 year old man died of colon cancer. I want to give a why to that. Yeah, we're going to talk about today
Eric Rieger 3:58
without questions. So it's there's really no right way to set the table here. And so forgive us here on the show if we kind of jump at different ways on how to approach this issue or colorectal cancer has been appearing far more frequently in the last two and a half decades for younger people and by younger people. It's not or it wasn't, it wasn't normal for people to have colorectal cancer before the age of 40 at all. And and now, we've seen in the last few years where the screening age has moved basically for all insurance carriers from 50 down to 45. And this is to basically capture those who need preventative intervention before it's too late. And go ahead.
Ken Brown 4:44
Oh, no, I was just gonna say that's exactly it. You and I live this world. We talk it all the time. And now because a super likable, lovable person that was taken before his time brings light to something You and I talk about every single day, we screen people young, we find young cancers. So for me, it's like, that's, it's horrible that that happened. But we want to prevent it. And that's what this show is about. It's about finding the science, it's about talking about it. And maybe even if just one person sends their child to go get screened sooner, even if just one person listen to this, says, you know, what I've been ignoring the symptoms of my stool looks a little different, meaning it's narrow, possibly, there's little bit of blood on the toilet paper, possibly, there's something else well, then everything that we do is worth it because we have one person to go ask their doctor and say, I want to make a change. Chadwick boseman, was a tragic death. But the problem is, is that this is a trend of a growing number of people below the age of 50, who are developing colon cancer, and he had stage four colon cancer. This is horrific, it's horrible. And as two people that prevent this cancer. It's, it's, it's a timing thing. And that's what this is about.
Eric Rieger 6:08
No question and this isn't isolated and he's not even remotely the first high profile person to die at a young age from colon cancer. If we all know who Katie Couric is her husband, James Monaghan, he died at the age of 42. In fact, I think the the GI Center in New York affiliate with the Presbyterian Hospital, there's actually named for him cheap, donated quite a bit of money to help them advance the research not only for colorectal cancer, but to start the trend of people starting to detect it earlier. So honestly, kudos to Katie Couric and and the foresight that she saw that my husband should not have died from this and he shouldn't have. We just didn't know that someone is at that age at the age of 42. Back then, which has been over 20 years ago. Yeah, that could have that could have happened. So let's get down to some of the many different things that maybe could contribute to why someone wouldn't go get checked, I'm going to leave the science part of discovering the colon cancer to you. But as someone who's 44, what are some of the reasons why someone might not go when they should go. And we'll get to the symptoms a little bit, but there's just some, some normal or abnormal things that have had have occurred over the last few years that may be contributing. Our sources of food have continuously changed quite a bit as a person who was born in the 70s. And a kid of the 80s best food was normal in learning about GMOs. Who knows no one's really made all of the connections and of course, there's a lobby that wants is more or less to somewhat ignore some of the things that could be the the key factors to allow Our body to grow these tumors etc. So, there's no doubt though, that if you were to compare my childhood with my parents who their generation does not have a high incidence of colorectal cancer, when they were in their 40s, there's obviously some type of environmental change, somehow. And I would say that food may have played a part and then there's some other things. One would be males. Traditionally, males just don't go to the doctor when there's signs and symptoms that should be sending them there. I mean, we know that here with with artron to our biggest purchasers of artron. teal, are women. Even if it's for the men in their lives, they actually are the ones who purchase are drawn to more often because they recognize the symptoms and they know that something number one should be done about it. And number two, we'll do the investigation to find out what can be done. It's just it's just facts, but something else that happened was really, really eye catching and a lot went back to that radio program that we were listening to.
Ken Brown 9:04
Yeah, so let me just stop right there because this actually started it. Tell me about the station you listen to and what they were talking about you showed up to work. So one of the beauty I was gonna say one of the beauties I should be one of the beautiful things that happens with you and I work together in one job where we take care of patients and we work together another job, but we've got this business, right, we're helping improve longevity, health, anti aging, all this stuff without trying to but when you showed up that day, you're like, hey, on the and I'll just let you run with it. Because when you start talking about it, I went,
Eric Rieger 9:42
Wow, that's cool. So I often hear in DFW Dallas Fort Worth, I listen quite often to the ticket. It's a long time standing sports radio station. However, if you're passing through if you've never listened to before, it's quite common that it's really just guy talk and They of course have Yeah, they they have sports that they feature on there but for for I would say most of the programming it's really just funny stuff that guys find funny and or interesting. But on my drive in sounds like cast. Yeah. does sound a lot like our podcast
Ken Brown 10:22
but on my drive into work they make fun of my vlogs a little on their on the ticket because we do that occasionally.
Eric Rieger 10:28
Yeah. Mike if they knew you, you know they would so or if they covered jujitsu, they could probably have have Mike on there. I've got a story
Ken Brown 10:35
about that related to this. So yeah, I'm gonna we're gonna tie all this in. It's all coming in. It's all gonna come
Eric Rieger 10:41
together. A lot of loose strings here, folks, but we're going to pull this together I promise. So all my drive into work. Then users, which is the early morning program, Jr. Miller, who's one of the hosts happened to be reading about how blown away he was. A Chadwick boseman his demise and he is One who has openly expressed that he's dealt with various digestive issues. He's a super athlete. He's a cyclist, a long distance runner has been for years very, very, very fit. But he has always been very, very in tune with what he perceives his body does best with diet, sleep, exercise, etc. Well, he began to read through a few different stats and statistics and most of them weren't that surprising about the mail about the changing in our food, but one of them was just in arguably, it's like, we've got to do something different here. We've got to tell people to go and get help. What he mentioned was a study that they had done over thousands of different patients on the average time from the symptoms. So that could be bloody stool or diarrhea, change in bowel habits, etc. And I'll let cannot let you get to that in a moment. But when the onset of symptoms First occur to the time of diagnosis. They used a marker at the age of 50. So if you were younger than 50, the time from the first onset of a symptom to the day of diagnosis was roughly 217 days. So let's just say that on the first day, there was a there was blood in the stool. It's on average, which means some people go much, much longer, on average, 217 days for someone under the age of 50, to go and see a doctor, then be diagnosed that they actually have colorectal cancer. Now, just compare and contrast that to 50 and above. It's just under 30 days, it's like 29 point something days. That amount of time is critical. It's almost one full or it's almost one or 10 times The amount of days over it's like roughly eight point something times. And in that amount of time cancer is that's just allowing cancer to go and recruit more cells and area for to continually grow and become far more cumbersome and unfortunately spread. That's when it becomes dangerous. So when I've told you that number, I can remember you looking at me this was just a weekend half ago, two weeks ago, looking at me saying, Wait, what did you say? And I said, they just said it. That's what's on my mind. 217 days versus 29. That's, that's really life and death. And it's just an amount of time where people didn't take the symptoms seriously enough to go and seek help from the right person. And then the next thing What if they did go and see a doctor? And what if they didn't happen to go to a gastroenterologist right away, but now you've got a smaller caveat that still some people Certainly don't mean any harm, but it's just not normal for someone to show up at the age of 34 or 29 stained, they've got blood and stool. Oh, we had a small interruption there regardless. So, in essence what we have are these people are young adults, and they have been ignoring symptoms, but now they've gone to go and find someone to help them. There's another caveat here. Sometimes the person they go to may not be a gastroenterologist and is probably just not used to seeing someone who is young, having cancer. So oftentimes, when a young person goes, What's contributing to that high number that 217 days, they may go to a doctor and say, I've experienced some rectal bleeding. I think I've seen some blood in his stool. Not always, but sometimes Someone may say, Well, you're 29 you're, you're 33 it's just not normal for someone your age to have cancer. Let's see if this resolves. Let's, you know, check a blood level to make certain that you're not anemic, etc. But it's just one more small thing that will delay diagnosis. And that's the problem. And can you know this if it's, if it's going to be more time, unfortunately, it's just more time for the cancer to take hold and be more difficult to combat.
Ken Brown 15:21
Alright, so you're exactly right. And this just shows that sharing information. You heard this on a radio station into work to work with me, right? We talked about it, we're like, oh my gosh, so I started looking into this. And it's estimated that 12% of all colon cancers will be in people younger than age 50.
Eric Rieger 15:40
Wow.
Ken Brown 15:41
Age 50 has been the screening recommendation. For many years, the screening recommendation, spoiler alert has now been moved to 45. And so we'll get into all of that later. But the most important thing for me is that that means that 18,000 people will end up with colon cancer below. The age of 50 this year that may ignore symptoms. And when we talk about different races, unfortunately, African Americans are at a 20% higher risk,
Eric Rieger 16:14
correct
Ken Brown 16:14
into a lot of different things about health care, availability, about different things like that. But this is our job is to prevent that. And then now there's studies showing that younger people have much more aggressive cancer also much more aggressive cancer with a worse prognosis. A survey was published in 2019 that found that 67% of colon cancer patients saw at least two doctors, many saw four doctors before a colonoscopy was recommended. So everything that you're saying is totally backed by science. Patients will often ignore the symptoms as well, as the doctors will downplay the symptoms that were reassurance which Generally, is the way I was taught. But now we're seeing the shift. Now we realize the youngest person I've ever diagnosed with colon cancer was 19, the oldest person was 89, where it was treated, meaning we treated it and cured it.
Eric Rieger 17:16
Right?
Ken Brown 17:17
So I have a 19 year old kid with rectal bleeding. And I said, Hey, we should just take a look anyways, found rectal cancer, and 89 year old, I was like, we really shouldn't do this at your age. But,
Eric Rieger 17:29
and let's highlight something really quick. You don't traditionally see anybody who's under 18. So the margin of how low that could even go for you is one year. So you've basically hit the entire span of your patient population that you routinely See, which is thousands of patients a year. You basically seen colon cancer as young as they come. And it should be alarming.
Ken Brown 17:54
It's it's super alarming because think about this now for if you're an individual is what it is. If you're a healthcare provider if you're an insurance provider, oh yeah, you're part of the healthcare system if this trend continues by 2030, so nine years from now, we're going to end up or 10 years from now, but somehow had 2021 of my I'm just trying to get rid of 2020 so fast, I just done with it,
Eric Rieger 18:31
understand and do.
Ken Brown 18:33
So, in 2030 32% of all colorectal cancers diagnosed will be in people younger than age 50. If we allow this to continue, now, if we allow this to continue now, three years ago, do you remember that when Ricardo Brey so Ricardo Brey was a good friend, he has a jujitsu gym, he's a he's a world champion in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I was so taken Backed by a study that was published in 2017, that showed for the first time ever, a younger generation was developing cancer in higher proportions than their parents. And so Millennials are having more colorectal cancer than their parents. that's never been seen before in any other generation. I went so far as to bring Jiu Jitsu mats and we brought Ricardo Brio. I encourage everybody to go to my YouTube page, Kenneth brown MD, where you can see Ricardo basically kicked my ass in the name of colon cancer, which is if if you're watching it, he throws me around like I'm like, like 90 pounds. At that time. I think I was 215 I mean, I'm 215 now so I was a little bit thicker. I was like, stronger back then I was working out more because COVID got in the way of things, but I was solid 215 220 back then, and he picked me up like I'm nothing. That's what we want to do. We want to cut out polyps like they're nothing so that people do not develop any type of cancer and that's what something like this so if you're bored even if you don't enjoy talking about colon cancer you can see me get my ass kicked by Ricardo so
Eric Rieger 20:10
well and it was it was a it was a fun taping and I love the way that that Ricardo was screaming out and not calling you can or Dr. Brown I just kept calling you polyp as he was chasing
Ken Brown 20:20
you. Yes. kept calling me polyp. So you're exactly right you show up listening to this very unfortunate Chadwick boseman passed away of stage four colon cancer, our job, literally Our job is to prevent this. That's what we do every single day.
Eric Rieger 20:39
And and just to put it into context, it's not your exactly run about the more aggressive nature because sometimes in some instances, some people may say that, well, there's an increase in cancer but but not so much death if this is not the case. There is a belief set from the American Cancer Society there's a 51% Increase, and young cancer patients under the age of 50. Since only 1994, it's only 26 years ago. And knowing that the death rates in this group are also rising death rate meaning more good notes with cancer ended up dying than those who are but a per per person per diagnosis are dying versus those who are diagnosed in the pool 15 above. So much of that is just timing. They are more aggressive. So it's just that much more important that we figure out the first onset symptom to go to someone who will be aggressive and making certain that you don't have something more sinister or serious than
Ken Brown 21:48
I can believe it's up to you. So the people that have attention deficit disorder and want to get off, what are the symptoms they should look for and if you have any of these symptoms, just talk to your doctor. I heard a podcast where even if your doctor says Don't worry about it, I'm gonna worry about it send me to a gastroenterologist. What
Eric Rieger 22:06
are those symptoms? No, it's always going to be blood in the stool. And that could be a dark Tari stool out of out of nowhere and sometimes honestly, they kind of steak bleeding from in and around the rectum. So bright red blood on the toilet paper or in the air or in the stool, definitely, and abdominal cramping. So sometimes if in Tell me if that's wrong, but I think sometimes when we've had folks they've had kind of unrelenting cramping and they don't know how to describe it. And I've often seen you start with them before they are before we actually do the procedure and try to get them to kind of localize it or show you where it is. So abdominal
Ken Brown 22:47
discomfort is is something so bleeding, abdominal discomfort, and talk about the stool. ribbon stools is what I'm getting at
Eric Rieger 22:54
here. Yeah, ribbon stools, and basically it's basically a change in the shape of the stool. itself because it will come out kind of flattened or something like that it's mechanical, it means there's a polyp or something causing an obstruction and pushing on it.
Ken Brown 23:09
And then if you're a family reunion and you bump into aunt Betsy, who says, Yeah, just had like colon cancer removed.
Eric Rieger 23:17
Yeah, if you've got a family member, and no more than two removed, you definitely want to be checked out and early. Don't wait.
Ken Brown 23:25
So these are all Googleable, but this podcast is about trying to figure out the next level. So the question is why. So the study that was done in 2017, the authors of the study, you know, the the main finding was that millennials have higher incidence of colon cancer than their parents. Their conclusion was, we don't understand why.
Eric Rieger 23:46
Sure.
Ken Brown 23:47
So I started looking at this when you said that about listened to the ticket. So why, and I started thinking you said at the beginning of this show, our diets have changed, things have happened, whatever. So Let's talk about that. Okay, let's talk about possibly why. Now, this is not my research. This is me looking at other scientists that have done this. But as we always do, if it makes clinical sense, and physiologically I see it that the body can do this. And then anecdotally, I see it in my practice, I feel very strongly that these kind of things correlate. So even if somebody says, well, there's no large randomized placebo controlled trial on this, and that, if it makes sense, and we see it on a day to day basis, if I had the time, I would publish the two together. And that's what we're doing right now. This is a unpublished study in the form of a podcast, where we get to look at your beautiful hair while we do
Eric Rieger 24:53
I mean, debatable, depending on who you're asking. Alright,
Ken Brown 24:56
so you got me thinking about this. And so I started finding some different studies. And so I thought A study that really looked at younger people that ate high fat food and high carbohydrate food. So whenever we talk about the standard American diet, the sad diet, it's, it's it's the two together. It's not that one is bad or the other is bad. But somehow when you combined refined carbohydrates with poor fats, it's a it's a recipe for disaster. And that unfortunately, is what most of the food that is easily accessible for a lot of people. So high fat, high carb study in younger people showed something kind of interesting, significant dysbiosis meaning it affected their micro biome. So their micro biome.com got changed and became very narrow. On other podcasts. We talked about the microbial diversity, meaning you want to have a lot of different ones when you eat a high fat high carbohydrate refined diet, you narrow your microbiome, they linked this to causing obesity. In the original 2017 study, they tried to say that maybe it's obesity causing the cancer. And so the key is that the dysbiosis can alter an epigenetic phenomenon. And what that means is your microbiome can turn on genes in your body. Keep that in mind. So the microbiome is super important. And then I started thinking, well, is this just a US phenomenon? Found multiple studies in other countries where they're having increased risk of colon cancer as well with that? So this got me thinking. And at least there's a clue to all of this. If the microbiome plays a role, and we know that when you disrupt the microbiome, you epi genetically predisposed to forming pre cancerous lesions, right? polyps. So that's what you and I do for a living, we remove polyps and that effectively cures colon cancer. A really interesting study came out in 2019 in March where they looked at mice and you and I talked about this because I threw a fit that one day at the endo center where we offer sodas, pops or cokes depending on your vernacular and what part of the country you're at. If you're in the Midwest, I guess it's a pop sodas northeast coke South Georgia, Georgia southeast Yeah.
Eric Rieger 27:38
Oh, and just so y'all know, this is this is just water. This is Waterloo. Yeah.
Ken Brown 27:46
Yeah, I'm pretty. I'm pretty adamant. So if you're a parent and you're listening to this, pay very close attention to this part, because nobody's discussing why Millennials are having higher colon cancer and I'm trying to figure it out. One way The hint is it affects the microbiome. I'm not feeding your microbiome, the appropriate thing it predisposes you to polyps. Then using that logic, a group of scientists took mice that were knockout mice, meaning that they were predisposed to having polyps. And then what they did is they gave them the equivalent of one can of soda of high fructose corn syrup. So basically the amount of high fructose corn syrup and one can of soda, they get to the mice daily, not like a whole can to a mouse, the equivalent of a tiny little can to a mouse relative to what a human would drink if they drank a what, however many ounces how many ounces is that Waterloo, that you're in that eight? Well, thanks 12 Yeah, so 12 ounce can and so they figured out that polyps love high fructose corn syrup cancers And polyps then when I say polyps What I mean is early cancer. So that goes with all cancers, colon cancers, the thing we're talking about today, this goes with all cancers. Cancers love sugar, they love the fuel, they grow quicker than your other cells, they need that fuel. So these guys showed that when you give high fructose corn syrup, the rates of cancer and polyps was super high compared to those that did not get the high fructose corn syrup. And they even thought about the whole obesity thing. And they said, No, we're only going to give one can these mice will not become obese. We're just going to see what just the high fructose corn syrup does. And what they showed is that when you eat fructose, unlike glucose, glucose is imported into the cell through a glucose transporter frutos is passively absorbed. through what's called the glute five transport system. Why is that relevant? As it turns out, you can overwhelm the glute five transport system really easy. So if you're like, Ah, he's been too nerdy about this stuff. If you happen to be a triathlete or a marathon runner and you're on your run drinking guru trying to give yourself energy, because it was always shown that fructose can be absorbed quicker, and then you'd end up having diarrhea. After the second or third pack of this. You've overwhelmed your, your fruit dose absorption ability. problem is when you have high fructose corn syrup, which is a refined form of fructose, which is a whole separate discussion on how maybe that is the root cause of a lot of our, our metabolic syndrome probably. Yeah, so this blew my mind when You drink too much. And it's not very much at all. I'm talking less than a can a day. That fructose doesn't get absorbed. The high fructose corn syrup doesn't get absorbed and goes to your colon and digested where they showed. That's where polyps and cancers adapt. They love that stuff. And they say, bring it here, bring it here. I want that. And so now we bring the microbiome back in. Now we've got a microbiome that's being fed high fructose corn syrup, they start sending signals to the brain that says we want more of that. The polyp is like, Oh, yeah, we want more of that also. Oh, yeah. And these researchers showed that the that the fruit dose gets converted into a fatty acid that promotes tumor growth. In fact, it'll actually read wire the polyp to the point that it will prefer high fructose corn syrup. So if you are doing this on a regular basis, you're setting yourself up for a serious problem. They have shown that there's actually something called the Warburg effect. And the Warburg effect increases something called glycolysis, which leads to increase fatty acids in these tumors, which promotes metastasis. Remember, so metastatic disease is the spread of a spread of cancer. Yeah, spread of cancer. So it's the beginning of this. We're talking about a very young, incredible actor who developed colon cancer and then we said that it's more aggressive. And then the studies where they looked at it said, we don't know why. I don't know if they have Not looked at this yet. Is it possible that part of the standard American diet, which uses high fructose corn syrup, not just in sodas, oh, everywhere, every read, it's in freakin bread. If you open a package, you're getting high fructose corn syrup.
Eric Rieger 33:17
Yeah.
Ken Brown 33:18
So if you're a parent, and you're listening to this, for gosh sakes, don't allow your kids to have sodas, pops, coach, whatever it is, that is your vernacular. Stop that right now. Because what you're doing is you're allowing your, you're allowing your kids microbiome to change to want more of it, which then tells the polyps, they change, to preferentially metabolize that grow and spread. When we sit there and say that we're, it's Think of it as a parasite power In cancers are parasites, do you feed the parasite to allow it to grow? Or do you starve the parasite? So it goes away? We tend to feed these parasites that grow. And if somebody says, Oh, well, it's probably because the obesity which is the whole thing, everybody goes back to obesity. Oh, it's obesity must be because Americans are are overweight. There was a 2019 study that published that showed overweight obese teenagers had a depletion of beneficial bacteria. And they had dysbiosis. Yeah, I personally think as a gastroenterologist that what we're doing is we're self selecting bad bacteria narrowing the microbiome, and then that microbiome gives us clues to go out and have more of this. They send signals to your brain that says we want more sugar. The easiest quickest sugar to get is high fructose corn syrup. So It's kind of a trick because I'm sitting there, we started out talking about young people having colon cancer. And then the question was always, how does this happen? So, I truly believe that if you protect your microbiome, and you avoid some very simple things, and then you go, oh, when I start looking at labels, it's a whole lot harder than what it looks because if you're if you're OPG, if you're opening packages, you're getting high fructose corn syrup. And it's I just found it interesting because
Eric Rieger 35:35
it's sad. It's sad that it's that it's crept into our normal normal eating habits. I mean, it really really is and not we're not innocent in our house I I try in most cases we're successful with the boys that they don't consume it but you it's it's difficult and what's crazy is I think that my both of my sons incidence of consuming high fructose corn syrup is a fraction to probably their peers, but it doesn't really matter. And then you put it best when you said, should you feed the parasite or deny its ability to grow? And what's kind of crazy is that I think that even in the back of our minds, some people have justified allowing an action thinking, well, if there's ever a consequence, there'll be so much further down the road that things may be different at that point. This is the bell. People are getting cancer much earlier and is in a system that they never had it before. So things are different. If you have a child.
Ken Brown 36:41
I don't care how old that child is. And you look over right now and they're sticking a straw in a juicy box. They're cracking up a soda they're doing over grab that thing. Look and see if there is high fructose corn syrup in it. Because or even sugar, lots of sugar but the sugar is The kicker about the high fructose corn syrup is that they these guys figured out that what ends up happening is that the, the polyp in the tumor prefers it and they end up converting it quicker of these very detrimental molecules. You're better off doing straight sugar than y'all are doing high fructose corn syrup in regards to colon cancer in probably all cancers, because it Now the one thing that is really unique about this study is that if you overwhelm your body's ability to absorb it, then you're going to preferentially feed the colon polyps because it's going to go to your colon,
Eric Rieger 37:42
it's leftover you leftover. You can't use it, the cancer will love it. And make no mistake when at least the way that I've always understood tumor growth. It's it's growing. It's growing rapidly. It's it's a high metabolism set. Have cells which are doing all they can to grow and expand. And what they're also doing is creating more pathways for blood vessels to form called angiogenesis but blood vessels so that they can get their hands on free energy. Guess what high fructose corn syrup is? It's just free energy to them, and allow them to even grow faster, to grow bigger.
Ken Brown 38:25
And oh, it's not free energy. It's turbo. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's terrible. It's what they want. They're like, Yeah, let's do this. So if you happen to be African American, you have a higher risk. If you happen to have anybody in your family first or second degree generation that had polyps or colon cancer, it's higher risk. So if you're turning around right now and you had a colonoscopy, you're like, I'm fine. I'm 50. You look at your kids and you go, they're at higher risk. Holy cow. I had my colonoscopy. I'm a responsible adults. I'm 50 years old, had the colonoscopy, and I look over at my 15 year old I'm like, Oh, no. Wait a minute, they're at higher risk than I am. Yeah, this is nuts. We've never had this discussion with kids before.
Eric Rieger 39:07
No, No, we haven't. And and I'm do so by the end of the year I'm doing I'll be 45 I hit the new threshold. Thankfully, they've moved it back five years and I haven't had any symptoms that if I have I mean, guess what, I wouldn't be any different. I would have been someone who's ignored and not paid attention or, or something like that. But I don't believe that I've had a symptom yet. I haven't had a close family member yet. That's sad. But all that being said, I am keenly aware that my environment my food supply is honestly it's it was vastly different as a young person than what my parents had fast foods. and different things like high fructose corn syrup are far more abundant.
Ken Brown 39:55
What was the whole thing you were talking about the original Dr. Pepper that that one town in Texas we were just talking about?
Eric Rieger 39:59
Oh, Dublin. Yeah, Dublin, Texas had the, to my knowledge, the last location of where Dr. Pepper was still made with real sugar at least domestically, right? Yeah. And they produced it and Dr. Pepper ended up shutting them down I guess about six or seven years ago. And it was because they began to distribute what they called the Dublin Dr. Pepper to other retailers and they didn't want them to do that because essentially it was competing with with the the main source licensed bottlers. So Dublin still produces sugar containing sodas, but they don't use high fructose corn syrup. I don't drink sodas at all, so directly doesn't affect me, but I'm with you. If you're going to still consume sodas, number one, limit them but number two, try to find somebody who doesn't have high fructose corn syrup.
Ken Brown 40:56
I'm guilty of this in the sense that I don't drink sodas but if I But if i put a condiment on something, a hamburger or something I'm eating I don't I don't look at the label and go oh my gosh, then you start looking and they all got it. They all got it. They all got it like okay, just know every single time it's okay everything you know we get the back to the moderation thing but just know if you got a critter grown in ya, if you got a little parasite called a colon polyp, and you're doing that it's loving it and growing.
Eric Rieger 41:23
And definitely Oh, you know, it's gonna be I know what else inside knows some of your favorite brands. If you said comment on burger This is perfect. Some of America's favorite brands like Heinz ketchup, for instance, they've actually been listening. And it's not the biggest seller yet but even even it on the shelves of Walmart, they oftentimes will feature either organic or no high fructose corn syrup ketchup. So some of these brands really do want to help make the change that the truth is until more people buy them and consume them. They're not going to produce them. They are a company like anything else. They want to see the numbers. They want to see if it latches on. If it resonates with people and that thing, oftentimes people don't. They don't appreciate that there's a new choice out there and how important it is to be made aware of why there is a healthier option offered a job, because I'm like this.
Ken Brown 42:20
Yeah, let's just reiterate. let's just recap what just happened on this because I think generally you and I joke around a little bit more on this podcast, but this is not a joking matter. Now, you got a situation where a cancer a generation before is now having higher incidences of a cancer that we thought was an older person's cancer. Yeah. Why is that? Who knows? I believe that there is data to suggest that consuming certain foods affects that. One of those things could be high fructose corn syrup, and making sure that you have proper microbial diversity meaning feed your microbiome. what it wants with polyphenols, insoluble fibers, the stuff that we talk about every single show. Now we're talking about here's how to save not just your life, but the next generation,
Eric Rieger 43:15
your kids without question your kids. Well, what a, it. I'm glad that the ticket had this topic. This is something that we will probably even have to touch on again. But it's Make no mistake. It's always alarming when someone comes through and they're on their follow up colonoscopy with us because they've just beaten cancer and you look and their age and I'm thinking of someone in particular is only 26. It doesn't. It's It's It's not fair, but I'm glad that that person didn't ignore the signals from three years ago. And that person is more than likely and wasn't out of shape wasn't obese. You don't have to be obese. You don't have to do a lot of Things Oh, I think
Ken Brown 44:00
that's what I think that's what took everybody back with Chadwick. Yeah, this is a is a solid fit Dude, that got taken down by stage four colon cancer. And you know, it's part of our humanity to say, well, it's not going to be me but as a physician and you in healthcare that puts people to sleep, we see stuff and we just go it's it can happen to anybody. So why would you stack the deck against yourself when it's so easy to do a couple simple changes. So we're gonna do this. Just don't drink sodas. Please do me one favor, just don't drink sodas.
Eric Rieger 44:41
Challenge yourself, see how good your pantry see how many things may you go to throw everything out but be conscious of it whenever you go shopping again. I mean, it's it's, it's hard. I mean, it's not easy to go and tell everyone to turn over all of their their food inventory. But for The most part eating fresh vegetables and meat, it may sound boring, but there's there's a reason behind it. And yeah,
Ken Brown 45:05
yeah, you're for it. And so I had this argument with somebody who just woke up and post off of this week actually, we got the same discussion. And she, she said, Can I have my Can I have my diet Doc, Diet Coke, whatever. It doesn't matter what brand. I think it was Diet Coke. And then I was like, ah, just as bad. And that's another thing that people don't realize, remember when I was on my microbiome? Oh, yeah. now realize that people that drink diet soda. So if you're over here going, Oh, thank God, I don't have any of the regular stuff. Guess what the preservatives and the sugar sweeteners in there, you don't absorb your microbiome breaks it down. And you have a higher incidence of getting obese and having type two diabetes, if you do the fake stuff, so you're not getting out of the woods on that one either. Not only that
Eric Rieger 45:56
you actually and completely not even gi related diets. Is contribute to the imbalance of phosphorus and calcium in the body. You actually can it can induce early stage onset of osteoporosis. I mean, it's, it's not your friend, I don't know. Tell us to say it. It's it's not you're rolling the dice
Ken Brown 46:18
when we sat there talking about this if you were if you were submitting a diet soda to the FDA is a drug you're like, Ah, this drugs you know, they were rejected and say you're gonna cause more harm than good
Eric Rieger 46:30
unless their lobby was really strong. Well, hey, Ken has always certainly appreciate it. That's really all that we have for young people and colon cancer get. Don't ignore the symptoms. Again, those symptoms are blood and stool bleeding from the rectum the abdominal cramping. If you have a family member blood family member that has had colon cancer problems like that before
Ken Brown 46:54
or polyps or polyps.
Eric Rieger 46:56
Uh, yeah, polyps Thank you. Don't ignore it. Don't ignore It
Ken Brown 47:00
ranges to caliber abdominal discomfort if you have this it is your right to talk to your doctor about it and it's also your right to go I'm I would like this evaluated because peace of mind and Oh, totally forgot my colonoscopy is on YouTube we put it there so that you can see that it's not a big deal. So I would like to put to the audience there. How should we do Eric's colonoscopy? Should we fill it live? Should we do it with lubrication Should we do it with sedation? Let's uh you know, I see you as the David Blaine of colonoscopies where Yeah, well I'm gonna make a
Eric Rieger 47:40
I'm really glad that we talked about all of this stuff beforehand.
Ken Brown 47:44
I think that we could top David Blaine's little holding on to the balloon thing we could do it 15,000 feet possibly
Eric Rieger 47:54
chair that imagine will probably live streaming on some platforms. I'm not familiar with like Myspace. A Snapchat so we'll just see what happens.
Ken Brown 48:05
Regardless, I think I'm doing for my colonoscopy this year your do Dr. ackermans. Do a guest you know the, the Yeah, substitute co host. He's do we should have a colonoscopy Palooza someday where we just show. I mean, we both try to practice what we preach. And I try for the most part eating healthy, unfortunately. Oh my. Did we comment on my tie dye shirt here? Yeah,
Eric Rieger 48:31
not yet. But you is that does that done by the famous Carla
Ken Brown 48:35
as some of the famous Carla who also happens during COVID to becoming a badass Baker. And so I sit there and say that I practice what I preach, but when I come home from work, and she's like, Look, Bobby I made lemon bars and you know, it's your daughter offering it to you and you're like, Okay, I'll humor you and you're like, oh, they're so good.
Eric Rieger 48:54
is with real sugar
Ken Brown 48:57
with real sugar, which is also something that I try to actively avoid but when your sugary little daughter offers it to you and she worked hard at it, you'd it's hard to ignore. And then you're like, Oh, it's got a shirt. She's like, Can I tie it? And I was like, Yeah, whatever. I'll throw it out. I'm like, Oh, it looks awesome. I love it. I'm gonna wear
Eric Rieger 49:14
a Carla in your daughter should also know that you get comments every Friday that you wear those tie dye scrubs, everyone loves them. Those are awesome. Well, I think that'll do it. Please Like and Share. If you've got a younger family member that you just want them to be aware of this, send it to them, send them this video. Hopefully we can just get through to them. It just takes a little bit of time. They don't even have to watch the whole thing to start getting the gist of the information. But anyhow, so gut check project, Episode Number 41. Young people, unfortunately was showing up with colorectal cancer too. If you get symptoms, go get checked out like and share, check out our sponsors, Dr. Brown anything else?
Ken Brown 49:54
No, that's it. I just think that it's a I consider it an honor that you and I get The opportunity to save lives the way that we do I consider it an honor that we can be on a platform like this and tell people because once again, one person thinks of something and says, You know what, I'm gonna go ahead and do that, then it's all worth it.
Eric Rieger 50:14
Yep, absolutely. We'll see y'all next time. That was Episode 41. Take care.
Ken Brown 50:18
Take care.