Full show notes @ https://thesternmethod.com/mark-simon/ Mark Simon, CN, CHCC, CPBN

Mark Simon established the Nutritional Oncology Research Institute (NORI) in 2011 as an organization focused on advancing cancer care through optimization of diet and application of targeted nutraceuticals. Mark Simon's background and interests are in diverse fields including clinical nutrition, biomedical engineering, plant-based nutrition, naturopathic medicine and neuroscience.

***Resources Mentioned***

Nutritional Oncology Research Institute

Cancer Schmancer

Can Dietary Methionine Restriction Increase the Effectiveness of Chemotherapy in Treatment of Advanced Cancer?

NORI PROTOCOL - methionine video by Dr. Mark Gregor

Fruit, The Lymphatic System & Cancer: Dr. Robert Morse

Book: Fit for Life by Harvey Diamond

Scientific papers on Methionine, Sodium Selenite, Vit E, Melatonin

AntibioticWatchdog

Nutritional Oncology Research Institute - Cbd, Hemp CBD, Hemp

NORI CBD - Cbd, Cbd, Alternative Health Products, Cbd Oil

Nutritional Oncology Research Institute - Home

Pure Organic Super-Greens Powder

Algae Omega-3 Oil, 400 mg DHA per ml

https://norinutraceuticals.com/shop/ols/products/selenium

Zinc Chelate, 15 mg, 90 tablets

Vitamin D3, 2,000 IU, 360 tablets

Iodine, 1.8 mg/drop

Sublingual Vitamin B12, 500 micrograms Methylcobalamin, 120 Tablets

1 oz. Organic Broccoli and Radish Sprout Powder (High Sulforaphane Content)

Vitamin E Delta, Gamma Tocotrienols, Annatto Derived (DeltaGold), 60 ml, 21,000 mg

Melatonin, 50 mg, 360 Tablets

Glucosamine HCl Powder, 8 oz., 227 grams

Sodium Selenite, 2 mg, 180 Slow Release Tablets

*Use code STERN at checkout to receive a discount

The Stern Method Website - What We Use:

Top Anti-Cancer Supplements

Essential Oils We Use Including Our Targeted Blends

Cancer Fighting Tools for Detox and Cancer Fighting My Kid Cures Cancer

Anti-Cancer, Non-Toxic, Healthy Lifestyle Products We Use

***

In This Episode:

Our guest today, Mark Simon, talks about how eating a low methionine diet can lead to better health and cancer cell death (apoptosis).

In this episode, Mark and Ryan discuss the benefits of a plant-based diet which is high in fruits and berries, moderate in vegetables and void of animal products. Through his work at the Nutritional Oncology Research Institute, Mark has developed the NORI protocol, based on the two core concepts of restricting methionine intake and using high doses of sodium selenite (selenium salts) and other targeted nutraceuticals to reduce tumor cell growth. In-vivo studies and clinical experience affirm the effectiveness of this type of diet. The concept of using pro-oxidants versus anti-oxidants is discussed as is the mechanism of sodium selenite and the relationship between methionine and cancer.

This conversation may challenge the way you currently view your nutritional protocol. We encourage you to keep an open mind. Be prepared to stretch your current point of view and perhaps gain some new insight and ideas.

Please enjoy this next installment of the Anti-cancer Revolution! Be sure to let us know what you think below.

0:41 Fruit or no fruit – That is the million dollar question

• Mark promotes a methionine restricted diet - high fruit, moderate vegetables, no animal products
• Utilizes Vitamin E, tocotrienol, selenium, iodine

2:30 Overview of the NORI protocol

• Based on two core ideas -
• • methionine restricted diet &
  • high dose selenium (sodium selenite)
• Mark started the diet based on personal experience after his wife was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer
• Diet plays a huge role as a tool in cancer prevention
• Sodium selenite is a form of selenium studied for over 40 years
• • Is a selective chemo-therapeutic agent
  • Can kill cancer cells without causing harm to other cells
  • High bio-availability
  • Can be administered intravenously or orally

6:00 Relationship between methionine and cancer cells

• Mark discover the work of Dr. Daniel E. Epner, MD - clinical studies using methionine restricted diet
• Video by Dr. Mark Gregor on Mark's website describing methionine and what it does
• Methionine is an amino acid
• If methionine is restricted, cancer cells die
• Could potentially work as stand-alone therapy

8:30 How do you reduce methionine in the body and what is the end goal?

• Through the diet methionine levels can be brought quite low
• • All whole foods contain some level of methionine
  • Fruits contain the least amount of methionine
  • Grains, nuts, beans, seeds, animal products contain the most
• Best to cycle methionine levels on and off
• In the future hope is to be able to bring methionine levels to zero

10:05 What do cancer cells do with methionine?

• Cancer cells use methionine as a building block
• Methionine is not needed for normal cell growth- not an essential amino acid
• MTOR pathway is stimulated less with methionine restriction
• Methionine restriction makes cancer cells more sensitive to treatment
• NORI diet is a platform to slow down tumor growth and make cancer more sensitive to treatment

13:50 What are your thoughts on eating fruit?

• Fruit is not the same thing as table sugar
• Most fruits are low glycemic
• Fruitarian diet does not cause high blood sugar
• 80-10-10 diet (80% fruit, 10% protein, 10% fat)
• Sugar does not encourage tumor growth, insulin does
• Ketogenic diet doesn't work long term because glutamine is not cut out of diet

18:00 NORI diet restricts other cancer-dependent amino acids besides methionine

• Glutamine
• Phenylalanine
• Isoleucine
• Tryptophan
• Asparagine

18:30 NORI diet is an alkaline diet

• Alkaline diet helps neutralize acidity around tumors
• Anti-inflammatory
• Anti-angiogenesis
• Dr. Robert Morse recommends a similar program

20:05 Where do you stand on juicing fruit? Is there a difference between eating fruit and vegetables with or without fiber?

• A little bit of freshly squeezed citrus juice is fine
• Bottled juices - no
• Believes juicing is counter-productive
• • More antioxidants flooding the system makes it harder to fight cancer
  • Hasn't seen data showing success with juicing and stage 4 cancer

• Plant based diet is a good idea
• Cancers are crazier today than years ago
• Gerson's original diet involved orange juice and lower protein (lower methionine)
• Juicing probably doesn't get phytochemicals up to appropriate levels

23:45 Can you elaborate on antioxidants and cancer?

• Study with animals on low-antioxidant diet slowed tumor progression
• Normal cells operate on a low level of oxidative stress
• Cancer cells operate at a high level of oxidative stress because of altered metabolism
• Adding oxidative stress will push cancer cells over the edge
• Cancer cells are dependent on anti-oxidant systems like:
• • Glutathione
  • Thioredoxin
  • Catalyse
  • Superoxide dismutase

• If you block glutathione synthesis, cancer cells die off
• Putting anti-oxidants into the system aids cancer survival such as:
• • Vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol form)
  • Vitamin C
  • NAC (N-Acetyl Cysteine)
  • Vitamin A

• NORI program is careful not to incorporate juicing or other antioxidant supplements
• NORI program utilizes pro-oxidants which increase oxidative stress
• • Sodium selenite
  • Generates hydrogen peroxide
  • Generates ROS (reactive oxygen species)
  • Triggers cell apoptosis

28:30 What are your thoughts on using antioxidants to increase chemotherapy and drug success?

• Oncologists tell patients no antioxidant supplements because they know they will interfere with treatment
• • Antioxidants protect cancer cells
  • Mark hasn't seen any research showing antioxidants make chemo work better
  • Research shows pro-oxidant therapy helps chemo work better
  • • Sodium selenite
    • Ozone therapy
    • Sulforaphane (need 10-20 grams or more) - not too efficient

32:30 Can you give us a breakdown of the different levels of methionine within food groups?

• Foods highest in methionine: Chicken and fish
• Next: other animal products- beef, dairy, eggs
• • Mark has been vegan for 30 years (supplements with B12 occasionally)
  • Caution: B-12 can be used by cancer cells for protein synthesis
• Soy, sesame seeds, and brazil nuts are high in methionine
• Lowest: apple, most fruits
• Dark green veggies are fairly high
• Hard part is getting enough calories on a low methionine diet
• • Potatoes and rice work to bring up weight

38:40 Cycling on and off low-methionine foods

• Encourage fruit-only breakfast (easily digested, full of enzymes, fiber, water, cleansing, detoxifying, extends a fast)
• Book: Harvey Diamond, Fit for Life
• Food combining
• Methionine restriction is anti-aging
• Ketosis is not necessarily a healthy state - not natural/normal
• Not a proponent of fasting for cancer patients - too stressful
• Recommends a fruit-only diet instead of fasting
• Super-charge your system by eating raw, high-energy, plant-based foods

44:30 What is the distinction between nutraceuticals and supplements?

• Use supplements to fill in gaps
• Recommends supplementing with iodine, selenium, vitamin D, zinc, B12
• Nutraceuticals can be used to lower inflammation
• • Sodium selenite is used as an anticancer nutraceutical
  • Vitamin E delta tocotrienol- high dose kills cancer cells
  • Glucosamine alters cancer cells
  • High-dose zinc is effective in killing cancer cells
  • Melatonin effective in fighting cancer (300 mg)
  • Curcumin - plant derived medicine - not very bioavailable
• Medicines work because of toxic effects on system/system modulation

50:20 How did selenium and tocotrienols stand out to you?

• High index of therapeutic value
• High bioavailability
• Water solubility
• ADME Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism and Excretion - nutraceuticals are analyzed according to this standard
• Sodium selenite has reached animal and human clinical studies (in-vivo)
• Methionine restriction is being used in ongoing human clinical studies

55:20 What is the mechanism of action of sodium selenite?

• Selective pro-oxidant
• Study which shows it inhibits glutamine metabolism
• Natural high uptake into tumor tissue
• Radioactive sodium selenite (SE-75) was used in the 1960s to highlight cancer cells on imaging tests
• Relatively small amount of sodium selenite (10-20 mg) is typically needed at therapeutic threshold levels
• 9 hour half-life
• Cells need to be exposed 24 to 72 hours or more - the longer the better
• Lower doses can be sustained for longer periods of time
• .3 mg/kg of body weight is dosage for IV sodium selenite
• IVs are used for pulsing in addition to oral dosage
• IVs can become cost-prohibitive

1:01:30 Hazards of buying sodium selenite online

• Can be risky - might be over a toxic dose or too weak
• Mark sells some on his website
• Might not be pharmaceutical dose
• Signs of overdose
• • Hair loss
  • Brittle nails
• Use under supervision

1:03:00 Is this an extract of selenium versus a whole compound?

• Sodium selenite is a mineral salt - inorganic form of selenium- trace mineral
• Chemical formula Na 2 Se0 3
• Body needs it all the time
• Organic forms vary in the level of anti-cancer activity
• 100% water soluble- easily crosses blood-brain barrier
• Vitamin E used is extracted from annatto seed - delta tocotrienol
• • Pro-oxidant
  • Looks and behaves like unsaturated fatty acid
  • Initiates lipid peroxidase chain reaction
  • Ends up in mitochondrial membrane
  • Interacts with and generates more ROS
  • Triggers cancer cells to die - apoptosis
  • Mitochondria are dysfunctional in cancer cells
  • Breaks the positive feedback loop of the mitochondria so cells can die

1:09:39 You mentioned DHA. Where do you get yours?

• Mark uses an algae oil
• Studies show DHA can be used therapeutically in cancer (6g/day)
• DHA will become incorporated into the cancer cell membranes and will undergo lipid peroxidase reactions
• Algae oil is unstable and oxidizes easily
• Antioxidants are added to maintain stability and this can be enough to interfere with NORI protocol

1:11:20 Budwig diet - similarities and differences

• Fruit, berries, no animal products
• Cottage cheese and flax oil mixture
• Flax contains ALA, a polyunsaturated fat
• Studies show ALA can trigger cancer cells to die
• Flaxseed oil must be freshly pressed (15-30g)
• Cottage cheese/quark works as an emulsifying agent to break up the oil for bioavailability
• Theoretically based on the science, it should work
• Not in favor of it right now because there are better methods
• Tocotrienol does the same thing only with more efficiency

1:15:30 Lithium Chloride

• Still under study
• Has a favorable effect on cancer pathways
• Used as treatment booster
• Studies with lithium chloride used in conjunction with 5FU in animals

1:17:07 NORI protocol is currently using 6 agents

• 3 core agents make up the cytotoxic cocktail
• • Vit E tocotrienol (1200mg), sodium selenite, Vit K3
• 3 other agents working around the cocktail
• • Glucosamine (8g), zinc citrate (150mg), melatonin (300mg)
• Used in conjunction with methionine-restricted diet
• Protocol is continually evolving based on clinical experience
• Simple, low-cost

1:19:10 Where can we find you?

• https://antibioticwatchdog.com/
• • Website covering relationship between antibiotics and cancer
  • Free ebook
• https://norinutraceuticals.com/ (store)
• https://noricbd.com/
• https://nutritionaloncology.net/
• • Info on program and protocol
  • Mailing list
• CBD products and nutraceuticals - Use code STERN
• Free consultations (30-60 min)

1:22:00 Closing remarks

• Please check out the podcast links and the links on our website ("What We Use" section). Your patronage is greatly appreciated and helps keep the lights on.
• For more info about fruit in the diet and to view our most popular video, see Ryan's podcast with Dr. Robert Morse. Link Below.
• Use your intuition and try different options if a current protocol is not working.
• There are many paths to wellness.
• Future podcast idea: feature two experts on opposite sides of a topic and let them discuss the pros and cons of each
• Please send your ideas for future speakers to [email protected]
• As always, if you are going through cancer….just keep going!

Related Podcasts

Fruit, The Lymphatic System & Cancer: Dr. Robert Morse

If you have a question or comment about this episode let us know below!!