Green Medicine: An Integrative Approach to Cancer

Mitchell L. Gaynor, MD

An Interview with Mitchell Gaynor, M.D.

As you lie quietly, the ambient sound of ocean waves, ebbing and flowing, softly fill the room. You hear the calming tones of a handheld crystal singing bowl, then the slow, deep long-held vowel sounds of chanting in Sanskrit. A voice says, "Let your belly be soft, and breathe deeply through your nose." A yoga center? A meditation class? It's actually the office of oncologist Mitchell Gaynor, a brownstone building on East 65th street in midtown Manhattan. While it seems an unlikely place for such an experience, Dr. Gaynor is one of a very small but growing number of doctors who are convinced of the benefits and efficacy of integrating high-tech Western medicine with a range of other approaches to healing, such as sound therapy, nutritional counseling, physical therapy, meditation, guided imagery, cognitive behavioral therapy, aerobic exercise, and chi-gong. Founder of the Gaynor Integrative Oncology Center in New York City, Dr. Mitch Gaynor is not only a committed physician and healer, but a pioneer who offers a broad vision of cancer treatment for the future, individualizing his services for each patient with whom he works. Of particular interest to Teleosis readers is Dr. Gaynor's record in environmental advocacy. His oncology center offers a variety of sustainable health care choices that are in alignment with the Teleosis Institute's Green Health Care program (visit http://www.teleosis.org/ghc-esm.php). He teaches patients about green lifestyle choices and about the impact these choices make not only on personal health, but in the home and environment as well. A passionate advocate, Gaynor is a senior medical oncology consultant at the Strang Cancer Prevention Center and assistant clinical professor of medicine at the Weill-Medical College of Cornell University. His books include Healing Essence, Dr. Gaynor's Cancer Prevention Program, and The Healing Power of Sound. He is perhaps the most outspoken physician in the nation about the relationship between health and the environment. His most recent book Nurture Nature, Nurture Health (see review on page 33) offers a comprehensive, in-depth encyclopedia of statistical information, leaving no doubt about the many and complex ways that human and environmental health are intertwined. Dr. Gaynor speaks clearly and eloquently about the importance and urgency of restoring healthy environments. Teleosis director Joel Kreisberg, D.C, met with him to talk about his ground breaking work.

Joel Kreisberg: You are very articulate about the relationship between the health of the environment and human health. How do you bring this into medicine?

Mitch Gaynor: I teach people how to green their homes and offices, how to shop for and eat organic foods, and how to read labels. There are many important foods people need to include in their diets on a regular basis. It doesn't make sense to occasionally detoxify your body with a cleanse or at a spa, then go right back to putting toxins into your body. Staying healthy is a lifelong commitment, and one of the first things people can do is to incorporate more detoxifying foods into their diet.

JK: Can you tell me some of the foods that serve as detoxifiers?

MG: A 1998 paper published out of Johns Hopkins University compared women with and without breast cancer. They found that women with the lowest level of a detoxifying enzyme called GST had a fourfold increased rate of developing breast cancer. Many foods increase detoxifying enzymes. For example, sulforaphane (a chemical found in cruciferous vegetables) markedly increases detoxifying enzymes. Garlic contains allyl sulfides that are potent inducers of detoxifying enzymes. Selenium is also very important. The antioxidant vitamins A, C, and E bind to an area of your DNA called ARE antioxidant responsive element that increases production of detoxifying enzymes. Green tea and omega-3 fatty acids, like cold deep water fish, can increase detoxifying enzymes. Once carcinogens are in your body, that's the first line of defense.

JK: You're talking about carcinogens entering our bodies as a result of exposure to substances in the environment that cause cancer. Aren't we already doing something about that?

MG: Since World War II, this country has become completely dependent on chemical agriculture. Now we are over-dependent on pesticides and herbicides, and the hard fact is that they're not tested properly. DDT was replaced with a pesticide called toxaphene. The toxaphene that was applied to crops is now in our bodies, and as a result millions of people are being exposed to serious health risks. Toxaphene was banned in the U.S. for most uses in 1982, after it was proven to be harmful, and all uses were banned in 1990. Herbicides and pesticides go through a very different testing process than drugs do. The few that actually are tested are only evaluated one at a time, not in complex combinations the way they are found in nature and in our bodies.

JK: How do they show up in our bodies?

MG: They are in multiples-many all at once. One of the reasons that this is so important, for example, is if you look at human breast tissue and breast milk, you find dozens and dozens of these multiples. In 1976, the EPA began a study testing for carcinogens and endocrine-disrupting chemicals in fatty tissue in both autopsies and elective surgeries in the U.S. They found about 20 in combination. Today around 84 different chemicals are commonly being found' Yet the funding for that study was recently cut.

JK: What are some of the other chemicals we are exposed to besides toxaphene?

MG: There are many things in our homes, from carpeting to particle board, that give off formaldehyde (even though it's no longer used in insulation). So, for example, you need to look for carpeting made out of cotton or wool. However, a study conducted at Yale University Medical School examined pesticides commonly used for growing cotton and found that they were linked to infertility in women, so it's important to use organic cotton. Consider, too, the proliferation of fertility clinics, where women are given high levels of estrogen even though we don't know what the long-term effects of this will be. We do know that estrogen is a carcinogen (see Nurture Nature, Nurture Health). In my practice, I see a lot of people who had a fertility treatment as long as five years ago and are now coming in with breast cancer. Is it something to which we have a definitive link? No. Is it something that we need to look at? Absolutely! Are we looking closely? No.

JK: So you're saying that there are many medical, agricultural, and manufacturing products and practices that we simply don't know the health effects of?

MG: Yes. Many people are not concerned about this because they are under the illusion that if these things were harmful, the government wouldn't allow them. But nothing could be further from the truth. The only testing that is done is almost always done by the manufacturer, who has a vested interest in the outcome of research; this often fails to protect the health of the consumer.

J K: Why is that?

MG: The Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 basically said you could release a product into the environment as long as it is not proven harmful. Compare that to the FDA requirement that says, "You have to prove that this substance is safe before you can put it into the human body." Look at aspirin or antibiotics. Sometimes even those things fall through the cracks, but at least the premise is that they have been proven to be safe.

JK: What is the difference between proof of safety and proof of harm?

MG: There is a tremendous difference, especially when you consider that these substances often include arsenic, mercury, lead, cadmium, dioxin, PCBs, benzene, toluene, and volatile organics. When these are released into the environment (for example, through hazardous waste combustion), they make their way into the body. None of these are tested! Products such as pesticides and herbicides typically are minimally tested; we can see the inadequacy of standards for testing by looking at DDT. DDT found in human breast miIk was first reported in 1951, but it wasn't banned until 1972. It caused many miscarriages, premature births, and other medical problems that are now well documented.

JK: Why do you think there is so little motivation to take more precaution?

MG: It's hard to say exactly, but clearly, industrial polluters are making billions of dollars polluting. The medical industrial complex is making billions of dollars treating those illnesses. And now we are in a downward spiral where we're seeing many more health problems in children. Look at the number of children with ADD and ADHD, the number of people on Ritalin, Adderall, Strattera, types of drugs that have not been tested for long-term side effects. I'm convinced there's a huge environmental component. Many endocrine-disrupting chemicals are also potent neurotoxins. Consider autism. The incidence of autism in the U.S. 30 years ago was 1 in 10,000 children. Today it is 1 in 30! Why is no one investigating this? You always have to look at current trends.

JK: Give me an example of a trend.

MG: Mercury is one of the most potent neurotoxins we know of. There are 68,000 tons of mercury emitted from coal burning power plants in the U.S. every day. It takes mere micrograms to cause potent neurotoxicity. One in every 12 women in this country has enough excess mercury in her blood to cause real damage to the developing fetus should she become pregnant. Lots of the mercury is coming from the fish we eat. What goes up must come down; when we burn coal and hazardous waste with mercury in it, it gets into the fish. The fish convert it into an organic mercury called methyl-mercury, people eat the fish, and the methyl-mercury-a neurotoxin-bioaccumulates in the body.

JK: We know that mercury is toxic. I thought we had regulations controlling this?

MG: When President Clinton left office, the EPA mandated that there would be a 90% reduction of mercury in all the power plants. The technology to accomplish this has existed for years. So, it's a readily available technology, with a one-time cost to do it. Within the last 18 months industry was given another 10 years. Now the deadline is 2018; furthermore, now it only has to be a 70% reduction. We know that more mercury is going to cause more suffering, but how many people really understand that? Or are able to do something about it? (Sign up to read Symbiosis: Mercury Vol. 2, No.3 at http://teleosis.org/archived-issues.php.)

JK: What should we do about it?

MG: One of the things that I feel very strongly about is that we wasted 50 years in America debating whether cigarette smoking causes lung cancer. Every doctor and epidemiologist knew that cigarette smoking causes cancer; even the cigarette industry knew it, and they covered it up. This was revealed by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting. What the industry argued was very similar to what is being argued today: "There are a lot of things that cause lung cancer. You can't prove that cigarette smoke causes lung cancer." They made the burden of proof so high that no jury could believe beyond reasonable doubt that smoking caused lung cancer in any given case. That swayed the regulators, the government, and the public for a long time until the mid-1990s, when a scientific study demonstrated that the main carcinogen in cigarette smoke, benzpyrene, bound to the DNA. It's like a fingerprint and it knocks out a tumor suppressor called P53. That was the evidence, the irrefutable proof. Then, finally, the tobacco companies were forced to make legal settlements. But we can't waste another 50 years debating whether pesticides, herbicides, cadmium, lead, PCB's, dioxins, and other volatile organic compounds are harming our health. People are dying now! We need to educate people and to change our laws. A lot of our clean air laws are based upon the fallacious assumption that cigarette smoke doesn't cause cancer; even though this has been proven to be completely false, we still base our clean water and clean air laws on that premise. Industries argue that if you put all these poisons high enough up in the smoke stack, or in a large enough body of water, their ambient levels will diffuse out and be so low that they can't possibly harm anyone. The reason that this is fallacious is that everything that goes up comes down into our food supply; this has been proven. Either we are drinking it or it is getting into the soil.

JK: This is called bio-accumulation.

MG: Yes. Ambient levels of dioxins-the most potent carcinogens known to man- largely come from combustion processes such as commercial, municipal, or medical waste incineration, from burning fuels (e.g., wood, coal, oil), and burning household trash. But some dioxin bio-accumulates in beef and dairy products, especially in the fat. Many of these chemicals stay in our bodies for decades. It is very important that we understand that all things that are released into the environment end up in our own bodies. Unfortunately, we are going to see many more emerging illnesses.

JK: Is this why you wrote your book Nurture Nature. Nurture Health?

MG: The book presents data that is irrefutable. People need to stand up for what they think is important. If they are not going to do it for themselves. they have to do it for their children. If we waste 50 more years debating this. the planet will be uninhabitable. Our legacy will be a nightmare. The public is going to become educated far sooner than those who are running corporations and the government may anticipate. There will be a dramatic increase in consumer demand for green products, which we are already seeing with organic foods.

JK: Can you explain the term environmental oncologist?

MG: Environmental oncology is part of integrative oncology, which is the combination of Western oncology with an approach that considers various factors that cause cancer in the first place, as well as how to reverse them. With Western medicine, we tend to look only at the symptom or only at the manifestation. So if a woman develops breast cancer, Western medicine will say, "OK. you need surgery, take it out; also. you may need chemotherapy." Treatment is directed solely at the manifestation, but fails to look at the imbalances, which may go back decades. I feel it's important to do both. You have to deal with the imbalances and the manifestations. If you leave all the causes and all the imbalances the way they were, and just deal with the manifestation, then you create another manifestation.

JK: What are some of the underlying causes you are talking about?

MG: When you look at underlying causes, you must consider many elements-environmental factors, for instance. With breast cancer, environmental factors are extremely important. The incidence of breast cancer in 1960 was 1 in 22. Today it's 1 in 7. In many diseases, genetic predisposition may be a factor, so a lot of people are under the illusion that they have either "good" or "bad" genes-this is fallacious. There was a fascinating study on BRCA mutations by Mary Clara King, an amazing epidemiologist, who examined frozen serum samples collected before 1940. Women with a BRCA mutation have about an 86% lifetime risk of developing either breast or ovarian cancer. She looked at women born before and after 1940 and found that the incidence of either breast or ovarian cancer tripled if you were born after 1940. That tells you positively that there is an environmental gene interaction.

JK: Are there other causes of cancer?

MG: If you look in general at what we call endocrine-disrupting hormones (which act as estrogens in the human body) these include a variety of pesticides, herbicides, dioxins, PCBs and even some heavy metals. We now live in a time when 1 in 3 Americans (projected to be 1 in 2) will hear the words, "You have cancer." We are living in a country where in 2005 the American Cancer Society stated for the first time, more Americans under the age of 85 die of cancer than heart disease. Seventeen percent of the children in America have a developmental, learning, or emotional disorder. (This breaks down to 4% developmental disorder, 6.5 % learning disability, and 6.5% serious emotional problem.) It is mind-boggling that very few people know anything about this. It's especially perplexing when you look at the fact that endocrine- disrupting toxins are showing up in every reptile, every bird, every amphibian, and every mammal on the entire planet. There is no wall you can build high enough, nowhere you can move, that you're not going to find these toxins. They are even found in seals and polar bears in the Arctic. They are found everywhere. And the levels are increasing. So we have no choice but to clean up the mess that we, as a culture, have created.

JK: Where else do we find endocrine disruptors?

MG: Polybrominated diphenolethers-flame retardants-are found in some children's pajamas, in many mattresses. Honestly, they're allover. The level in mammals, especially if you look at harbor seals in San Francisco, where a number of studies have been done, has doubled. There are lots of endocrine-disrupting hormones out there. Look at parabens, which are used as antimicrobials in deodorants and anti-perspirants, and at phthalates, which are almost ubiquitous chemicals in cosmetics, shampoos, and skin creams and are used to make plastics soft enough for children to chew on, These endocrine-disrupting chemicals are found in high levels in breast tissue, breast milk, and breast tumors, The fact is that none of these have been studied adequately for their effect on human development is mind-boggling.

JK: You are very articulate about the problem of toxins in the environment and their relationship to health and disease, How can one bring these ideas into medicine?

MG: There is a great organization run by Gary Cohen: Health Care Without Harm, It is amazing what they are doing with hospitals. We try to do the same thing in this office, teaching people to green their homes and offices. Teaching people how to eat organic foods and read labels, Many people read food labels, but then don't realize that lipsticks contain high amounts of lead. Men are using anti-grey products, which also contain a lot of lead. Kids are playing on pressed wood play sets that are treated with arsenic to keep the pests out Arsenic is absorbed through their skin; if they then eat without washing their hands, the arsenic is absorbed into their bodies, It's amazing that these products are still legal.

JK: What can we do?

MG: Parents need to become enlightened consumers and find play sets made from whole wood with the FSC or Forestry Stewardship Council label on them. There are a lot of things in homes including, carpeting and particle board, that give off formaldehyde, so it's important to find carpeting made out of jute or organic cotton or wool. We need to inform ourselves, choose green products, and at the same time demand that manufacturers and government regulators keep toxins out of the environment to begin with.

JK: This is fascinating, because you can say that these chemicals are in our environment-but the environment is an interrelated mix of everything, so you have to address the whole picture along the way. Are your patients open to protecting the environment?

MG: Definitely, When you read my book, you see the scope of the problem and how much solid documentation there is. It really isn't possible to read the book and conclude, "I don't buy it" The evidence is too overwhelming, When I speak at environmental conferences I meet people from many great organizations such as Children's Health and the Environment Coalition (CHEC), They are very involved in educating nursery school teachers. Some hospital administrators are beginning to listen as well. More and more people are becoming better educated about this huge and serious problem.

JK: You also sound hopeful.

MG: I am hopeful, because I see a real shift in people. I see very intelligent people with a lot of power in society-doctors, lawyers, bankers, corporate executives-I isten to the evidence, and they get it. It doesn't matter if they're Democrat or Republican or anything else. They understand that this problem is affecting everyone and everyone's children. That's what I am most hopeful about, that this isn't just a liberal or conservative perspective. It affects us all regardless of political affiliation. And once we understand that, once we have the knowledge, we can't go back.

JK: You seem to have great deal of optimism, and I appreciate that. What keeps you so positive about it?

MG: I have many patients who were given a very poor prognosis, and they are living years longer than anyone thought was possible. So, is it just one thing? Is it just getting rid of the environmental toxins? Or is it the vitamins and superfoods or the other things we use? Is it just the work with yoga, meditation, and sound? No, you can't just do one thing. But I have seen time and time again that working holistically with people can truly transform lives. From that standpoint, I have a lot of hope. Also, I've seen parents go home and change how they do things. They remove toxics from their homes, they eliminate pesticides and herbicides. Then they come back and tell me, "You know, my daughter has stopped throwing all those temper tantrums!" This can be self-perpetuating. I only have to tell a few people and they carryon the work of educating others.