Dr. Joe Tatta: Okay, everyone. Welcome to today’s edition of the Healing Pain Summit. I have a great, very interesting guests for you today and we’re going to be discussing how to overcome the pain of cancer and how to recover from cancer. So our guest today is Dr. Nalini Chilkov. She can combine her diverse training in traditional Oriental medicine, modern biomedicine and cell biology with over 30 years in clinical practice. She primarily serves cancer patients who are recovering as well as those recovering from other chronic illnesses. She is a respected expert in the collaborative integrative cancer care world. She’s known as an innovator in building bridges between modern and traditional healing practices and she is recognized as the GoTo clinician for those interested in preventing as well as recovery from cancer. Her practice is located in Santa Monica, California, and you can find her [email protected] and she’ll tell us more about that later at the end of the video. But Dr. Chilkov, welcome to the healing pain summit today.
Dr. Chilikov: Thank you so much for having me, Joe.
Dr. Joe Tatta: So this is a great topic. I’m obviously recovering from cancer. Can be very difficult and it can be very painful at times. But tell us just first how you got involved in kind of cancer care and you’ve now really are the preeminent pioneer of integrative cancer care, kind of combining both the Western and Eastern practices?
Dr. Chilikov: Well, like many people sometimes it’s a very personal story. I really got interested deeply in cancer because at about the same time in my life, a little over 30 years ago, both of my parents were diagnosed with cancer. And so that made me really want to help them. But it also gave me the reflection that we really in our whole family had this susceptibility to cancer. And at the same time there were more and more patients coming into my office looking for help. And there’s really no health model and traditional oncology. So I’ve really made an effort to put looking at how to support and protect health and then sustain health just from the minute of diagnosis. And then if you come from a family like mine, you really want to not express the genetic susceptibilities that you have. So then prevention is also a big piece. But that means you have to be thinking about health and healthy function, not just disease. Right.
Dr. Joe Tatta: And we know now that cancer is kind of rapidly becoming, you know, in some circles the number one cause of death in the country. You know, it’s really competing with heart disease and cardiovascular disease. Can you talk about that just a little bit and just shed some light as far as you know, where we’re going. Obviously the work you’re doing is mostly centered around prevention but also towards those that have cancer and they’re recovering. But where are we as far as just the, you know, kind of, um, episode episodes of cancer in our country?
Dr. Chilikov: Well, the statistics are really pretty daunting in the United States today. One in two men and one three women are expected to be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. That’s pretty daunting. So if you think you’re sitting in a room with 10 or 12 friends, one and two of the guys, one and three of the women either has already been diagnosed with cancer or will be. So it’s very close to home, will touch us all very personally. And this is primarily due to the toxic environment that we live in. At the end, the chemicals we’re exposed to, we really are biologically unprepared for that level of detoxification. And we, our modern lifestyles compromise our nutrient intake. We can’t really repair our DNA or protect our DNA and this genetic material when it becomes damaged, that’s the initiation of cancer. And so if you have a family like mine that might be less efficient when those stressors and challenges happen. So you have to create an environment inside your body that is inhospitable and not supportive of the promotion and development of cancer. It’s kind of like changing the soil in your garden, right? You want to change the soil so that you get healthy plants. You want to change the environment of your cells so that you go healthy cells instead of cancer stuff.
Dr. Joe Tatta: Excellent. So think about your environment first and how you can change that. So you prevent cancer or at times you can even cure it by just following those simple principles. So on this summit we are focusing on pain and I have personally treated many patients who have recovered with cancer and it’s going to be a very painful experience and there’s lots of different types of cancer. But just talk to us, kind of give us a good overview of how cancer, how you know, how cancer causes pain for people.
Dr. Chilikov: Well, cancer patients are pretty uncomfortable a lot of the time. Sometimes pain itself will be the symptom that takes you to the doctor because there’s what we call tumor generated pain. So that may be that you have a mass that’s pressing on nerves or blood vessels or in Oregon. And you notice some pressure. And let me just say for listeners, even if you have a dull pain, check it out because that could be as loud as the symptom ever is. Um, there can be also, uh, pain after surgeries and procedures like biopsies, invasive procedures. There can be pain if you have a port because you’re receiving chemo, that might be in your chest or in your arm. You may have developed a blood clot, you may have a lot of inflammation from the therapies you’re receiving. And so there’s a lot of reasons that people have discomfort when they are cancer patients. And a lot of the side effects of the treatments can be longterm. So you might still have inflammation or pain or you might have scar tissue, what we call adhesions, scar tissue forms inside your body after a surgery or after a lot of inflammations kind of gristly and it presses hard on things. So there’s a lot of physical reasons and inflammatory reasons primarily why people have pain.
Dr. Joe Tatta: So it’s really interesting cause you’re talking about inflammation and obviously we know that inflammation is directly linked to pain. It’s one of the, you know, four Cardinal signs of inflammation. But talk to us about how inflammation can start the cancer process and ignite, let’s say, you know, tumor cells,
Dr. Chilikov: well the word ignite is a very good one, Joe, because if you think of inflammation in your body, sort of like lighting a match, right? It’s like a little hot spot, a little fire. And that might remain like a, an Amber or a call and just be low level chronic pain or it might be a big flare of a fire and be pretty, pretty hot and pretty swollen. But either way, the presence of inflammation itself is a set up for damaging DNA. But tumor cells themselves produce a lot of inflammatory molecules. So you have inflammation coming from both directions and cancer. So that also is why you feel so tired when you have pain that’s from inflammation or fatigue that scans are related because the inflammation itself can be exhausting. So on top of being in pain, you also may be extremely fatigue.
Dr. Joe Tatta: Yeah, there’s definitely that kind of play back and forth between kind of that fatigue as well as the pain. Now I know in your practice, you and I have talked before, they use a lot of kind of natural methods for alleviating pain in your cancer patients. A lot of them are already on a lot of types of medications or they have chemotherapy. So you’re kind of going the natural route to, um, you know, it’s, it’s a way where things, um, interact less. Tell us about some of the natural alternatives that are available for pain reduction in cancer patients?
Dr. Chilikov: Well, there’s a couple of things that I’d like to highlight. Number one, occupant is a great tool and so if you’re under the care of a physician that’s worried about drug interactions, you don’t really have to worry about that with occupants. So occupy I’m sure is used anytime where from once a week to three times a week if you have bad pain and if you have chronic pain you might want to consider a series of 10 or 12 treatments to really change the pattern. So occupants sure is a great drug free tool that usually most physicians don’t object to that. There also is a wonderful Chinese herbs that I think is one of the best botanicals for managing really bad pain and that is Corey, Dallas. C. O. R. Y. D. a. L. I. S. it’s a Chinese herbs. That’s been what we studied and it is excellent for pain that is derived from nerve pain as well as inflammatory pain.
Dr. Chilikov: And it also can help you sleep. It is not habituating so you won’t get hooked on it. And it’s a little bit sedating. But even if you take it during the day, you won’t feel too sleepy. So I have patients with all kinds of pain, but particularly cancer pain can be quite bad. So this is a really good to know about. The other two herbs that I use the most are curcumin, which is a plant chemical that comes from the root tumor. It learns yellow Curry, uh, root, and also boswellia, B, O, S, w, E,L , L, I a. And you can actually get the resin boswellia resin. It’s actually frankincense, or you can get the concentrate called boswellic acid. And that is far more potent. And both of these chemicals actually enter over 50 different pathways that have to do with immunity, inflammation, tumor growth, and pain and, and control of pain.
Dr. Chilikov: So these are very simple, very, very safe. And the one thing that you have to know, many people are familiar with some of these more common herbs. There is a big difference between a nutritional dose of something and a therapeutic dose of something. So if you’re going to get enough effect, you have to actually take a lot. And with herbal medicine, it’s plant material. You can’t shrink it into one little tiny pill. So quite often you might be taking three or four capsules three or four times a day to achieve a therapeutic dose. But you think of it like food, you know, you wouldn’t think that would be too much food to eat. So that’s what people think that herbs don’t work is they really just don’t take enough.
Dr. Joe Tatta: Yeah. So the take home message there, I mean a lot of people have heard a tumor before and they may sprinkle it on, you know, their, their chicken or their rice. But for that therapeutic dose you need much higher qualities. And I think most people don’t. It’s never really, it’s not talked about often, I don’t think.
Dr. Chilikov: No. So let’s get a little more specific. You’d want to start at a baseline dose of curcumin around 2000 milligrams. Some of my patients take 6,000 that you would want to do that under the supervision of a professional because the one, uh, caution is that both of these plant chemicals can increase your tendency to bleed. So if you are on blood centers or are you having, you have low platelets, if you’re a cancer patient, then you want to consult a professional before you take high doses of these.
Dr. Joe Tatta: Excellent. Excellent. So we’re here with dr Nalini Chilkov we are talking about how to recover from the pain of cancer. So earlier you mentioned detoxification and how the toxins in our environment can be so problematic. Can you give our listeners just maybe one or two tips about how to just, you know, be mindful of detoxing life whether they have cancer or not. Because obviously when we’re talking about prevention, it’s really important to detox so that you don’t obtain cancers but cancer doesn’t land on you and your family.
Dr. Chilikov: Yes. And of course a lot of cancer therapies themselves I’ve talked to, you know, so one of the most important things is just take a walk around your house and look through every room in your house and see what kind of chemicals might be there. So you might find that if you’re in your bathroom and you’re looking at your personal care products, then you want to be sure there’s no parabens, P a R a, B E N, S in your self care products. So cosmetics, body care products are just a flow of chemicals that are absorbed right through the skin. So a really good practice is to make sure everything you use on your body is, is safe for you. And so you can go to a natural food store, for example, where you’ll find brands that are committed to nontoxic products and ingredients. If you walk into your laundry room or NGO garage or into your kitchen, you want to look at the soaps and the cleaning supplies that you’re using and make sure that they’re not toxic.
Dr. Chilikov: And you know, if you have children in the home, it’s really, really important because if you think a smaller body exposed to the same amount of chemicals is going to get a bigger dose. You know, so with children it’s just very important to keep your environment very clean because by the time someone is diagnosed with cancer, that tumor may have been brewing for 10 to 20 years. So it may be that we were quite young when our DNA got damaged. And so if it could be repaired, then we won’t develop cancer. Or if the environment around that little group of cells, well never permitted to grow and, and spread and travel, then you’ll never be diagnosed with cancer. But quite often this happens early in life. So it’s really important to also protect children but educate them as well.
Dr. Joe Tatta: Excellent. So obviously prevention starts at an early age and it starts in the home. A lot of times.
Dr. Chilikov: Yes, home is way you could really look around, make a difference.
Dr. Joe Tatta: So we’ve talked a lot today. We’ve talked about detoxification. You’ve talked about, um, herbs and nutrients that you can provide patients. You know, all of this for someone who has cancer or some recovering can be very traumatic event for them. You know, just going from the diagnosis through the treatment and you know, even the recovery, like once the cancer is gone, a lot of times people’s bodies are just so, you know, exhausted from everything that they still have a good year to like physically rehabilitate themselves. Um, and a lot of that can be very, very stressful. So what do you see in your practice as far as just kind of the mental kind of post traumatic stress syndrome that cancer patients experience?
Dr. Chilikov: Well, you’ve said something very wise and that is many cancer patients are thought of as if they have post traumatic stress syndrome. And that means that you’re suffering from prior events that were stressful to you. And if you think about the cancer experience, the moment you hear the diagnosis, that’s the big first stress, right? Then you get invasive diagnostic tests. Then maybe you get surgery, maybe you get chemo. Maybe you have to be in a toxic drug for a long time. Maybe you lost a body part. Maybe you, uh, lost relationships or your ability to work. A lot of traumatic events happen in the cancer journey. So it’s very important I think to be kind and compassionate towards oneself and also for the loved ones around to understand the multiple insults that happen during the cancer journey. And I have a patient right now who has been through a year of aggressive treatments and surgeries from a very advanced cancer and she’s very depressed right now because she thought, Oh, it’s over.
Dr. Chilikov: I should feel better, but it’s going to take her about a year. She’s having some physical pain because she had multiple surgeries. She’s exhausted because she’s been through quite a lot, so she doesn’t really have a sense of wellbeing. So when you’re getting back to life, then a good question to ask is what causes me to thrive? And then you want to put those things in that, you know, are the foundation of doing well. So having a really nutrient dense diet, especially making sure you get enough protein, at least 60 grams of protein, that would be three, four ounce servings that you’re well-hydrated. You drink plenty of fluids, at least two quick today that you get enough sleep. I mean this might seem very basic, but it has a very transformative effect on the body’s ability to recover and repair and bounce back. And so if those basics are not in place, then you’re going to have a longer recovery.
Dr. Chilikov: And then I like to use adaptogenic herbs and what that means. These are herbs that are useful to help us cope with stress. And so one of the most wonderful herbs for cancer patients is ashwagandha. It’s an herb from India and it helps you to relax when you’re feeling stressed, but it also nourishes you so that you aren’t so depleted. There’s another herb called Rhodiola, R, H O, D I, O L a. And this is an herb that really bolsters you when you’re under great duress. It actually is used by Olympic athletes who also under physical stress to produce stamina and endurance and so really helps us to cope with stress. But it also lowers stress hormone cortisol in the brain. So it allows you to sleep normally and also to think straight and be clear and make good decisions. So there’s a lot one can do to, to support oneself. That’s great. And I love
Dr. Joe Tatta: the part about the protein in the beginning because I’m often, I have patients who are in physical therapy and they’re trying to recover physically and they don’t understand that you actually need more protein when you’re recovering because you’re trying to rebuild tissues. So any tissue in your body that’s rebuilding when you’re recovering from cancer, when you’re coming from any kind of surgery, you need more protein than you would normally eat within your, you know, your diet. And I always tell people try to go for organic protein cause the amino acid profile is better. Um, as well as the fatty acids, the Omega threes,
Dr. Chilikov: well let’s say something about Omega three because there is a physiology in advanced cancers. It’s called… And in advanced cancers, the body will start to digest its own muscle mass. And so you can really feel weak from that. And so by increasing your protein and by increasing your Omega three fatty acids, you can arrest that process. And so not only are Omega three fatty acids, anti-inflammatory, but they also have some anti-tumor signalings. So they actually stopped some of the growth of tumor cells. So they’re very, very important.
Dr. Joe Tatta: Excellent. And do you um, supplement wise as far as protein, how do you use, um, you know, a wide spectrum of amino acids or protein shake or,
Dr. Chilikov: well, I try to get the person to do what they tell me they’ll do, you know, have you tried to be practic practical, but almost all my treatment plans have a shake included because quite often when you’re sick you don’t really feel like eating. And also if you’re not being very active because you’re tired or in pain, then you don’t feel very hungry. So I have a shake recipe that has 40 grams of protein in it. So if our minimum is 60 grams a day, but really you need 80 if you’re under treatment or recovering from surgery or injury, then if you make a shake that as 40 grams of protein every single day. And then we can put some of the herbs in there. Choose, don’t have to swallow so many pills. You can put the fatty acids in there, we can put vegetables and fruits in there. So it could be a meal substitute as well as a therapeutic to me. Right. So almost all treatment plans have a shake in them. And so I think that’s a good strategy.
Dr. Joe Tatta: Hmm. I like the idea of opening the capsules and putting them in because as you said therapeutically, you can take somewhere between four and six capsules, sometimes twice a day, which people, you know, they kind of get pill fatigue. So open them up, put them in the shake and that’s a nice way to take it.
Dr. Chilikov: Yeah. So it’s a good strategy and you don’t even have to drink the shake all at once. Right. You can do half of it. Get your 20 grams, drink another half. And I also, uh, when giving a liquid protein drink that that is very concentrated, I also give a digestive enzyme with it that has a high amount of protein, digestive enzymes in it. So you absolutely get the most absorption out of that liquid junk that’s going through your digestive track more quickly than food would.
Dr. Joe Tatta: Excellent. Excellent. So this has been dr Nalini Chilkov. It’s been an excellent interview. Tons of great strategies here for people. Tell us where they can find out more information about you. Obviously your practice is in Santa Monica, California, but you also have a couple of websites let us know about,
Dr. Chilikov: well the main website where there’s a lot of free information for people is integrative cancer answers.com and we actually have a page on the site that’s in great of cancer answers.com/gifts for all of your community. They can download seven free reports with lots of this information for free for them. So they can go there and there are a lot of free resources on that site and there’s actually a blog post called a better breakfast on the site that has my shake recipe on it.
Dr. Joe Tatta: Excellent. Um, anything you’d like to leave our viewers with today regarding cancer and, and you know, your approach and where we’re heading in the future?
Dr. Chilikov: Well, I think the most important thing to know is that it’s very important if you or a family member has cancer or cancer risks to take control of that and look for the tools that create a body where cancer cannot thrive and build that body and get that information and learn that because then you feel not at the effect of it so much. And if you are under care of a of a physician, then you build a team where you have the best, best cancer docs, but you also have the best health experts on your team so that when your disease expert doc has done with you, you still have a plan for your health in place that’s going to last you for a long time.
Dr. Joe Tatta: Excellent. Excellent. I love it. So I encourage everyone to follow Dr. Nalini Chilkov on www.integrativecanceranswers.com she’s got tons of great information for you there to help you prevent cancer, which is the most important thing and it’s been a great interview. Thank you so much. And this is Dr. Joe Tatta signing off for today’s Healing Pain Summit, and we’ll see you in the next interview.
