Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: What's worthwhile healing Mind, body, and spirit. I'm Ramsey Zimmerman. I choose peace of mind, vitality of body, and joy of spirit over stress, exhaustion, or overwhelm. Together, let's explore and pursue the many ways to build holistic health and wellness.
[00:00:31] Speaker A: My mom got the diagnosis whilst I was still asleep. And then, you know, she came bursting into my room and kind of woke me with those news. So I, for mine, couldn't quite grapple that my dad was doomed to die. Because, you know, that's the common conception we have about cancer. You get it? You die. You know, I did the only thing I could think of doing, which was, you know, bury myself in. In research, learn as much about the disease, and how I maybe can help my dad survive.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Hey there. It's Ramsay here. That was Merlin Marquad. Merlin's father did not die. A couple of years before that, Merlin had begun studying molecular biotech at university. So he was well positioned to learn everything he could about cancer and how to survive it. These days, Merlin and his brother Cedric are sharing what they've learned about cancer and how to outlive it. Cancer is a terrifying and complicated issue. I'll warn you that a lot of this conversation gets into the weeds of the biochemistry. But the advice that Merlin and Cedric give today and through their online community is actually quite straightforward. Take good care of your mitochondria and deprive the cancer cells of sugar. Merlin is truly a wizard, and he's eager to share his wisdom with all of us so. So that we can help our families too. Let's get started. Hey, Merlin. How are you doing today?
[00:01:55] Speaker A: I'm doing very well. Yes.
[00:01:57] Speaker B: Awesome. Well, hey, it's great to meet you.
I have to say. You are the first Merlin that I've ever met in real life. And your brother is called Cedric. Right. So, gotta say, man, your parents gave you some awesome names. Are there any. Is there a story behind the naming?
[00:02:17] Speaker A: Yes, actually.
My mother wanted names that can't easily be turned into nicknames. That was one criterion.
I think she kind of failed with Cedric because I constantly call him Set.
So it kind of didn't work out. But her second requirement was for the names to be unique, so not something like Thomas.
You know, at least in Germany, Thomas is a very, very common name.
[00:02:46] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:02:48] Speaker A: So she didn't want to have a kids named Thomas, or I think David is also very common. So that was kind of why she chose those names or why mom and dad chose those names. And they are quite rare.
I think it's I've met one other Merlin in my lifetime, so yeah, it's not a common name.
[00:03:10] Speaker B: Well, I don't. I don't run into too many Ramses either. So it is fun having a.
Having a unique name.
So.
So it seems like your family is. Is pretty close.
I understand that a few years ago your dad was diagnosed with cancer and that you and your brother jumped right into action researching ways to improve his situation.
So that's what we're going to talk about a lot today, but without yet getting into really the technical details.
What was that like and what happened there?
[00:03:52] Speaker A: I mean, what was that like?
I would say pretty stressful, to be honest.
I think.
I think I'll start with. With the kind of progress that we went or process that we went through.
So he. They found like a liquid accumulation in.
Near his lungs, which he. Or which they found because he had pain there.
He went to the doctor for the pain. The doctor said, no, no, I'll just give you some pills. You're getting old, that's all.
Which I find weird. A weird thing to do, to be honest. So he didn't like check with a stethoscope or something like that, which would be very simple, right. And then see that the lungs don't sound as they should.
But then that was not satisfied with that. So he went to a different doctor in a nearby hospital, I think it was.
And there, no, now I remember it was the cardiologist, actually. He went to the cardiologist for some. A refresh of blood or pills against high blood pressure that he had back then.
And the cardiologist said he wanted to make like a routine checkup before he extends the pills.
And through that, the cardiologist then actually heard that there was something wrong with the lungs. So he, you know, checked with the stethoscope and then, then our dad was transferred to a hospital here, neos, where the doctors then, you know, looked at what that was. They found that there was liquid there.
Then they pumped that liquid out and sent that home.
And within I think two weeks or three weeks or something like that, the liquid was back.
So, you know, that's not very good.
And it was, I think the first pumping they did was over 2 liters, which is like, I don't know, in freedom units, three pints and something.
So quite a lot.
[00:06:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:05] Speaker A: And the second pump pimp was less, but that was enough for them to be like, okay, there's something wrong here.
And then they did a screening of to see what, what that could be.
And it Turns out that it was cancer. So that's kind of how that occurred, how the diagnosis came in.
My mum got the diagnosis whilst I was still asleep, and then, you know, she came bursting into my room and kind of woke me with those news. So that already was a bit overwhelming, I have to say. You know, you're fast asleep, everything's good, and suddenly you get woken up by that.
And then, I mean, it kind of just went from there. I, I, for mine, couldn't quite grapple that my dad was doomed to die because, you know, that's the common conception we have about cancer. You get it, you die.
And I think it's pretty obviously no one, no one wants their father to die. So I also didn't. And you know, I did the only thing I could think of doing, which was, you know, bury myself in, in research, in cancer research, research and learn as much about the disease and how I maybe can help my dad survive and it all from there, basically.
[00:07:32] Speaker B: And you already had some training and background in this, right?
[00:07:36] Speaker A: Yes, that's right.
[00:07:37] Speaker B: Tell us a little bit about your education.
[00:07:40] Speaker A: Yeah, so I think two years, must be two years before the diagnosis, I started studying molecular biotech at the university in Heidelberg.
And you know, it's, it's not medicine, you know, but the, the basic education is actually better to understand medicinal research papers than the doctor education because we get, you know, just general cell biology, biochemistry, human biology, all the kind of biology, physics, chemistry backgrounds in there. And that's in the first two years that that background or groundwork is laid for us.
So I had a good basic understanding and could actually read the papers, you know, that I found it wasn't because if you don't have the vocabulary and don't understand the language in which it's written, it's going to be incredibly difficult.
So I was lucky that I had somehow chosen two years before to study that which, you know, became useful two years later.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: Yes, exactly.
Okay, so cancer, like you said, is, is pretty terrifying for most people. And it's very mysterious, I think, for most people. And, you know, most of us don't have sort of a biotech kind of education or background.
So you sort of dove in headfirst into kind of grappling with and understanding cancer and, you know, looking for ways to sort of help your dad. And what did you learn, like, what did you learn that about cancer that, you know, was surprising or sort of, you know, different from what you had expected to learn? What's, what's the nugget of what you Learned that became relevant.
[00:09:37] Speaker A: The I think the first thing that was kind of paradigm shifting for me was that I found some studies on dietary interventions against cancer and they showed extreme results in it was a study comparing patients with only chemotherapy versus patients with chemotherapy and ketogenic diet.
And it showed immense difference in those patients group, patient groups. And I was before that under the impression that, I mean, cancer is just a genetic disease.
You know, the genome mutates, you get it and that's that, you know, you can't really get rid of it in any way. Diet doesn't help because, you know, it's genetic. So diet doesn't really do anything. And those papers kind of broke that assumption for me.
So that's where it started. I, I found just papers which didn't really fit into my understanding until then of cancer.
And then, you know, I just dug and saw if there was any mechanistic studies or any background studies or cell biological studies on cancer to see how it develops. Did anyone recreate cancer in the lab? That anyone test different cell components in cancer cells if they were carcinogenic? So cancer causing and stuff like that.
And it, you know, turned out that the common, you know, commonly taught perspective on cancer was outdated.
And that new research from the last 5ish, maybe even 10 years has, you know, largely not replaced that, but kind of built onto that and deepened our understanding of cancer.
[00:11:26] Speaker B: So what was the sort of traditional view of what cancer was and how has that view changed?
You mentioned ketogenic diets, but start to start to draw some dots and start connecting some dots. Like yes, what was the previous thought about what cancer was and how it happened versus the newer thinking?
[00:11:52] Speaker A: Okay, so previously I think I need to explain a bit of the cell structure to, to make that point because cells have kind of three things going on in them that are important for the discussion on cancer. They have a nucleus which holds the genome. So that's where the, the term of genetic disease comes from.
Then they have mitochondria which do a large part or do the heavy lifting and energy metabolism. And then there's cytosol which kind of is all the rest of the cell internals.
And the, let's say old paradigm of cancer was that it was entirely genetic. So it was just the nuclear genome or the nucleus that was responsible for cancer development. And that it was caused by accruing mutations of the genetic material in the nuclear, in the nucleus.
And that has been, you know, that that conception is wrong. It cannot be entirely caused by it because there have been experiments that go against that.
For example, there was an experiment which was very interesting, where the nuclear genome or the nucleus of a frog tumor cell was implanted into a frog egg cell.
And those hybrids, which we would expect after the old theory to be cancers. Right. They have a cancerous genome. They should be cancerous.
They turned out to develop normally into tad bolt.
So that is kind of completely paradigm breaking, because it means that, yes, okay, cancer does have a very heavy genetic component, but it isn't entirely caused by a gene, by genetic damage.
[00:13:52] Speaker B: Right. It's not just the nucleus.
[00:13:55] Speaker A: Yes.
And that is then also where the second component I mentioned comes into play, which is. Or which are the mitochondria, which are heavily, as I've mentioned, involved in energy metabolism, but also in a process known as apoptosis, which is kind of a last resort quality control measure, where the cell kills itself.
So basically, what happens with cancer development is that you have, or it seems at least, you know, current state of our knowledge, which is probably going to change in a few years anyway.
But current state of knowledge is that what happens in the initiation of cancer is that the mitochondria get suppressed.
Their function gets somehow minimized or suppressed or lowered so that they can no longer fulfill both the energy metabolism role and their role in quality control. So in killing the cell if it becomes damaged.
And that then allows cancer cells to accrue these mutations that then give rise to this kind of phenomenon of the genetic disease.
But this genetic disease is kind of predicated upon the mitochondria being suppressed. That's kind of the first step of that whole cycle.
So it's like the new paradigm doesn't entirely discard the old science or the old paradigm. It just augments it. It deepens the understanding we have of cancer, especially of how it is initiated, of how it arises.
So it's not like we just throw out all the old knowledge.
[00:15:42] Speaker B: Okay, so what I think I'm hearing you say is that our newest and best current, best understanding of as cells become cancer cells and as cancer proliferates, it's not exclusively having to do with what's happening in the nucleus. It also appears to be a result of the mitochondria not effectively doing what they're designed to do.
And mitochondria are very well known as, you know, the powerhouse of the cell. That's like what everybody always says, but they also sort of clean up at the end. So if a cell begins to malfunction, then it's the mitochondria's job to basically Shut it down so that it doesn't, you know, continue to misfunction and doesn't replicate that way.
[00:16:32] Speaker A: Right, exactly. Exactly.
[00:16:35] Speaker B: So that seems pretty revolutionary. Right, like that.
Um, that's really interesting to me for a number of reasons. So I'm pretty interested in sort of mitochondria in general and, you know, metabolic dysfunction. You know, I read a lot about that, talk a lot about that.
It's a pretty, you know, significant condition that we have kind of in the world today.
And it also sort of implies that we can have an angle of attack against cancer, A couple of angles of attack against cancer. Right.
So let's start talking about those. So what are sort of some of the implications? So if we begin to look at cancer from that perspective, what are you sort of suggesting that we do about it?
[00:17:27] Speaker A: I think the.
The basic obvious premise for prevention is, I think that's the easier part of it, is to keep mitochondria happy.
And if you can keep mitochondria happy and they don't get suppressed in function, it would seem very unlikely for cancer to arise, given our current understanding.
Now that, of course, has a lot of components to it that know, would be a discussion in and of itself, how do we keep mitochondria happy.
But when then trying to heal cancer, it seems that the same, you know, approach does also hold water. If we promote mitochondrial metabolism and get them basically to reactivate, which was done in a study in. This is not in humans. This is in cell culture.
In a study with macrophages where they were cancerous, Macrophages were forced to.
To use mitochondrial metabolism by giving them a pharmaceutical drug that I'm not going to name because I don't want people to take it.
But they were forced to use mitochondrial metabolism, which then led them to stop behaving like cancer cells or behave less like cancer cells. So that already put kind of a dampener on the whole cancer effect, just forcing them to have mitochondrial metabolism. Even they, though, they didn't really do anything to heal the mitochondria or to actively support mitochondrial health. They just basically told the cell, well, you have to use mitochondrial metabolism. And that already slowed cancer.
[00:19:17] Speaker B: So that might be a little confusing, right, because cells use mitochondria for energy. So I think from a. From a practical standpoint, and from the perspective of how do we keep ourselves happy and how do we sort of work against the cancer cells?
The point is, where we're getting to is that the cancer cells are really looking to sugar.
You know, intake of sugar in our bodies that's what the cancer cells are really going to eat versus our healthy cells. They can run off of other things, like fat, you know, through keto. Yeah, right.
[00:19:57] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So, I mean, it's the burning of keto or the burning of free fatty acids, that's kind of the mitochondria or the.
That happens entirely in the mitochondria.
And it's like cancer cells could still use that.
But then obviously the negative impact of that is that the cancer cell will have to reactivate mitochondria and reactivate mitochondrial metabolism.
And mitochondrial metabolism and quality control are intricately linked.
So there's a molecule in mitochondria which is known as cytochrome C, which functions or. Which does very, very heavy lifting both in energy metabolism and in. In the apoptosis. So in the cell suicide quality control mechanism.
So if cancer cells upregulate mitochondrial metabolism by, you know, eating a lot of fat and starting to burn fat, then they kind of stop behaving like cancer cells because they get back on the mitochondrial quality control mechanisms.
[00:21:10] Speaker B: Well, that also sounds good.
[00:21:12] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
[00:21:15] Speaker B: That works for us.
[00:21:16] Speaker A: Exactly.
But the thing is, they won't stop having the mutated genome, which is.
[00:21:23] Speaker B: Right, right, yeah.
[00:21:24] Speaker A: Which makes healing it entirely, curing it entirely, so difficult.
[00:21:30] Speaker B: Right.
So that's kind of a. Let's pause there for just a second because it's not like we're saying this is a cure for cancer.
You know, there's like the. That. That phrase is almost like just as mystical. I mean, you are Merlin, but I don't know if you have a wand to have a cure for cancer.
But what we're talking about is that having cells to behave properly or continue to behave properly. And what I'm hearing you saying is that even some cancer cells can begin to behave better without even necessarily being like, cured of the cancer. But. And it's a numbers game with cancer cells, right, because, you know, you've got billions and billions of cells and in many ways you're trying to slow the reproduction of the cancer cells and like stop the reproduction of the cancer cells, you know, or you're trying to get them to shut themselves down because, you know, cells in our bodies get created and destroy all the time kind of basis.
[00:22:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:38] Speaker B: So I think this is really kind of significant in the way that people can think about it.
So it's.
I've seen in some of your stuff that you've written, it's about outliving cancer, which is to say that, you know, that you're in this competition with cancer, your healthy cells are in a competition with cancer cells and to see which one can out produce each other.
[00:23:02] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think the Holy Grail is still the cure.
[00:23:07] Speaker B: Now you're going after the Holy Grail. I see what you did there, Merlin.
[00:23:10] Speaker A: I think, I think that's still the Holy Grail. But, but I think we are far off that and I don't think that with what we're doing currently, I don't think you're going to cure cancer.
I just don't think that that is supported by the evidence.
But I do think that you can slow cancer down and perhaps even, you know, kind of make it inactive, which is, you know, almost as good because it means that you get to live a full life.
[00:23:43] Speaker B: Yes.
Okay, so in addition to providing the right fuel for ourselves, what are some other ways that we can systematically support our mitochondria in our cells?
Either as a means of prevention or as a means of the kind of reversal that we've been talking about the last few minutes?
[00:24:05] Speaker A: I mean, one thing that's also a very interesting kind of subfield is the field of chronic inflammation of, or specifically chronic systemic inflammation, which is basically a long term unnecessary body wide upregulation of inflammation.
And inflammation is primarily good because we use it to steer our immune system to where it needs to be.
Chronic inflammation isn't good because it leads to the immune system kind of falling asleep. It's like if I, if I called your name a hundred times, at some point you would just stop reacting.
And it's kind of the same with this immune signaling that if you have constant systemic inflammation, the immune system just, you know, stops listening and it stops acting.
And then you get into problems. And then on top of that, this chronic inflammation, or what is known as chronic chronicization of the inflammation is linked with mitochondria. So it's kind of, you get prolonged inflammation and that kind of hampers with mitochondrial function and that then worsens the inflammatory response and the kind of clearing of inflammation and that kind of goes hand in hand. And it, it, it's this vicious cycle of mitochondrial dysfunction and chronic inflammation kind of worsening each other and spiraling downward.
And that sounds, you know, devastating at first, but the good thing is you can actually clear that up by, you know, supplying the right nutrients that help clear up inflammation or that the body uses to kind of act as anti inflammatory signalers.
You can, you can stop you ingesting some things that are very highly pro inflammatory.
So you know, if, if you don't get a lot of pro inflammatory signaling and you get better anti inflammatory signaling. It stands to reason that this chronic inflammation slowly subsides. And that's exactly what we also see in people.
[00:26:25] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's really good. Inflammation has lots and lots of issues, and it's not surprising that this would be one of them.
[00:26:34] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And it's also a kind of. The dysfunctional mitochondria also make the inflammation worse. So it's really a bad way to go.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: And then are there sort of other unique aspects of cancer cells, as opposed to healthy cells, that we can sort of use to our advantage in order to make our bodies inhospitable for the cancer at the same time that we're making it more hospitable for healthy cells?
[00:27:09] Speaker A: Yes, there actually is.
I kind of.
I kind of started with this with the.
With the sugar fermentation, with that kind of line of thinking. Because the waste product of sugar fermentation that, you know, cancer cells heavily rely on, especially early in development, is lactic acid.
And that lactic acid is very acidic.
And if you've ever, you know, had very high sports exertion and your muscles kind of cramp up, you and then how long that cramping lasts, you can see how difficult it is for the body to clear that because that cramping is caused by lactic acid buildup, that burn closing up of muscles.
And so it's acidic. And it's hard to clear now that at first sight might not be too bad. But normally our cells, at least those inside of our body, don't like acidity.
They're very much against acidity. They want a nice stable, neutral or body neutral pH.
And what cancer cells do at first, only incidentally, because they use this sugar fermentation, they will excrete this lactic acid into their environment.
And that acidity actually, when it gets too bad, it kills surrounding cells. So it actually makes the environment of the cancer tumor unhospitable to normal cells.
And then on top of that, you have a. Which is insane to me, but you have a feedback kind of regulation of feedback signaling from the acidic environment to the cancer cell itself.
Which, this sounds super stupid, but it upregulates mitochondrial metabolism without upregulating quality control.
And that's tied directly to this acidity.
Yes. So that's where was. Where I meant. That's the can of worms, you know.
Okay, so that's acidity.
[00:29:25] Speaker B: And so if it's. So how, I mean, can we make our bodies more alkaline then? As a, like, how do you, do you, are we trying to bring down the acidity? Are we trying to deal with that or what, what's the implication there?
[00:29:38] Speaker A: I would say we're not trying to make the body alkaline because that's more chemical. So you wouldn't try to ingest a chemical alkaline agent, but you would want to enable your body to neutralize acidity. So that's kind of the difference. It's in, in, it's called alkalization therapy. It's actually something that's used widely in for example, acidosis patients. So for example, it's, it's been researched as well for keto acidosis in diabetic patients where you, where you give the body a compound that the body uses then to neutralize the acidity. But you don't directly alkalize the site, the acidity because if you directly alkalize the acidity, you're also going to affect areas that shouldn't be affected.
[00:30:31] Speaker B: So your body's able to do it, it just needs the right inputs to do it?
[00:30:35] Speaker A: Yes, yes.
[00:30:36] Speaker B: What does that treatment look like? Like in sort of practical terms, like what are we talking about?
[00:30:40] Speaker A: I mean there's, there's different ways of doing it. You have something that's, it's, it's kind of indirect alkalization. It's, you give the patient a medication that stops the excretion of bicarbonate. And that's significant because bicarbonate is used inside the body to neutralize acidity. It's kind of the, you know, the systemic anti acidic agent that the body uses to neutralize. And the body is very efficient at both transporting bicarbonate and transporting the waste products of using bicarbonate to neutralize acidity. So it's very optimized for that. So, so these, this indirect approach is basically to just tell the body to stop excreting it, which I don't think it's necessarily that smart because it also uses the bicarbonate excretion to upbreak, uphold the salt balance and stuff like that, acid base balance.
So, you know, hampering with that, hampering with the kidneys basically, I don't think is necessarily smart.
So the other way one can do this is by directly ingesting bicarbonate, sodium bicarbonate, for example, or something like trisodium citrate, which is metabolized into bicarbonate.
And these then just directly give your body bicarbonate.
And then if your body doesn't need that, it excretes it and if your body can use it, it uses that in or for. For neutralization of acidosis or neutralization of these. This acidity that, for example, cancer generates.
[00:32:29] Speaker B: And so those are like supplements that you just described.
[00:32:33] Speaker A: I mean, then sodium bicarbonate is basically baking soda.
So it's very cheap, very available.
Trisodium citrate is a, is a preservative and flavor compound used widely in sodas and very safe, very, you know, very cheap as well, incidentally. So I, I think, hey, a kilo, so that's two pound back costs something like €20. So that's like, I think $24. There's not very really supplements because no one has made supplements on them yet. And I think if someone made supplements from them, they would be significantly more expensive.
[00:33:14] Speaker B: But yes, it's one of those things where just is too widely available for anyone to make lots of money off of it. So why would anyone promote it as a solution?
[00:33:28] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah.
[00:33:30] Speaker B: It's super pessimistic of me to say it like that.
My jaded is coming out. But. Oh, well, so we're not like, especially in this conversation. We're not giving direct advice of, you should go and, you know, start eating boxes of baking soda.
No.
Well, but let's talk about sort of why and how it is that.
Well, we've been talking about why and how it is that, you know, all of this. But. But now what, like, are you.
How are you and your brother kind of putting yourselves out there in the universe to help people and to sort of share what you've learned through your experience and through your research and everything else?
[00:34:22] Speaker A: I mean, right now we're kind of saddling multiple horses or at least trying.
We're doing these podcasts and I have to say this has thus far been the nicest one so far.
[00:34:36] Speaker B: So, you know, this is fun for me. So.
[00:34:40] Speaker A: Yeah, anyway, it's been really fun. Yeah. And so that's one thing. Then we're.
We're also making YouTube videos that kind of go into all of these topics and dive into, especially into more of the literature.
[00:34:56] Speaker B: We.
[00:34:56] Speaker A: We've had some videos that are more how to. But I think it's time to kind of just deep dive into the knowledge. I think that makes more sense, to be honest, to share the. The knowledge.
So we're doing that.
And then we also have a website which basically has articles on it and has a.
What we call the Mosaic Guide, which is kind of just a distillation of everything. I'm basically talking about everything I'M basing this on and all of the scientific literature that it, that it is based on and sourced from.
So it's basically. It's written a lot like my bachelor thesis, you know, just very scientific. Every claim I make, I try to have a citation for that. And I don't know if at that. If I am perfectly, if I was perfectly successful in that, but that's kind of the aim of that, to have it all, you know, just be plain scientific information and hopefully written in a way that it's understandable to the lay person.
And then more recently, we've now launched the early Access to a community project where we kind of want to connect cancer patients with one another and help them outlive their diagnosis and help them kind of stay informed, stay on top of the, you know, the newest science, whatever that, you know, whatever direction that takes at the end.
Because I'm. I'm not really trying to like, share an ideology of this is how cancer is, but I'm just trying to share what we're actually finding in real time in scientific literature.
And that's kind of the goal.
[00:36:41] Speaker B: What do you hope to accomplish with this project and your work over the next few coming years? Where would you like to see all of this go?
[00:36:53] Speaker A: I mean, ideally I would like this to be.
Or this knowledge to be implemented in mainstream medical guidelines and in just broad societal, cultural change around cancer, where, you know, we then see that cancer no longer is the second biggest killer in the world. I think that would be. That is the kind of dream scenario.
I don't necessarily think that that's particularly realistic.
So if I had to be more realistic, I would say I would want a.
A thriving business around that, that has helped thousands of cancer patients and you know, would be on track to helping many more and then basically build a international community of doctors, of healthcare professionals, of ex cancer patients who kind of, yeah, help. This mission of, of trying to eradicate cancer as a cause of death. And I don't think you can really, as I've said, I don't think this is a cure for cancer, but if you can stop cancer in its tracks, you know, most cancer patients are still alive. So if you can stop cancer from growing, you can stop it from killing them so they will stay alive.
And that's kind of, that's the, the hope.
That's the goal.
[00:38:19] Speaker B: Well, I think that's, I think that's a wonderful hope.
You know, it's, it's just really great to see that, that hope and that drive and that spirit within you. And as you describe, you know, as you and your brother work together, it certainly.
It came from a sort of personal and family kind of drive, but you were really. Seems like you were really uniquely positioned with your skills and training and mindset in many ways that lots of other concerned family members are not.
And what I see is that you've kind of blazed a trail that other people, other family members and people who are sort of at risk or are experiencing it can sort of benefit from what you've learned. And I love the idea of creating a community where people can support each other and work together.
And, you know, you're not.
You're not talking about medical interventions. You're not.
[00:39:29] Speaker A: No, you're.
[00:39:30] Speaker B: You're pretty neutral, it seems like around sort of the, you know, actual physical treatments and things like that. What I hear you talking about are ways that you can, you know, affect your diet or your behavior or, you know, maybe some. Some hacks, if you will, to do certain things. But that's like, it's. It's. There is no magic in this.
No Merlin.
[00:39:57] Speaker A: I mean, sadly not. Right. It wouldn't be nice.
[00:40:00] Speaker B: Yeah, but, you know, magic is just science that we don't yet understand, so.
[00:40:06] Speaker A: That's such a good one. Yeah.
[00:40:08] Speaker B: And so maybe you can reverse that too. If we can find the science and understand it, we can use it like magic. I don't know, maybe we can fit something in there or. You know, you kind of blew it.
You really kind of blew it by explaining to us the science because it could have been magic before if you haven't explained science.
[00:40:28] Speaker A: True. Yeah.
Well, so I should have made it a magic trick, huh?
[00:40:34] Speaker B: You should have. You should have.
How can people connect with you, learn more? Where can they find and join this community that you're building?
[00:40:47] Speaker A: I mean, the community is accessible from marshwood.com outlive and I think the link explains itself. It's kind of the whole. The whole motto of what we do is help people outlive and to connect. I think YouTube is not very good to connect. It's kind of one directional. But we have a YouTube channel and then I have an X profile that is sometimes more active, sometimes less active.
That is just my name. So it's x.commerlinlmarkwad.
so that's how I would connect. And the website is just marchwad.com and.
[00:41:27] Speaker B: That'S all the mailch.
W a-r-.com March Ward.
[00:41:33] Speaker A: Exactly.
Exactly.
[00:41:36] Speaker B: Well, this was really fun. Thank you so much. Really appreciate you taking the time. I really appreciate you investing so much of your energy and effort and, you know, brain power into helping not just your own family, but everyone else's family.
[00:41:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I. Look, I.
I just didn't see a different option. I didn't see an option of just, you know, yeah, I helped my dad and now, whatever, who cares?
I kind of just. Yeah, I feel a sense of duty to help others as well.
So that's kind of where we're at. And now let's see if it works. I hope so, but, you know, it's never certain.
[00:42:21] Speaker B: Yes, indeed. Well, wave that magic wand. We'll see what happens.
[00:42:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:42:29] Speaker B: Looking for more? Visit whatsworthwhile.net to listen to podcast episodes, learn from books and articles, and live better by choosing healthy products and practices Services. I'm now offering services through worthwhile advisors for personal coaching, professional advising, speaking, and group facilitation. If you or your team are ready to reduce stress and anxiety, build vitality and momentum, and accomplish your goals without burning out, then please contact me, Ramsey Zimmerman, through the website or on social media like Instagram X or LinkedIn.
[00:43:02] Speaker A: Thanks, Ram.
