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Antioxidants and Cancer

This is a transcript of a Dr. Jay Show broadcast on 1560TheGame. Dr. J. Michael Bennett is a Board Certified Orthopedic Surgeon and a Fellowship Trained Sports Medicine Physician serving patients from Katy, Fort Bend County, Metro Houston and Southeast Texas from offices in Houston, near the Houston Galleria and Sugar Land, TX. Call 281-633-8600 for an appointment at our Sugar Land office and 713=234-3152 for an appointment at our Houston office


Studies show that broccoli may help in the prevention of cancer (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Here’s the transcript of the sixth portion of the Show with Dr. Theodore S. Piliszek as a guest expert. Dr. Piliszek is a graduate of King’s College School of Medicine of the University of London and his practice is at Willowbrook Medical Center in Houston.  

DR. J. MICHAEL BENNETT – We were talking about disease prevention, and there are all sorts of cancers out there. What’s your take in regards to cancer prevention just in general – I know diet and exercise obviously play a big role – but what else can a person do to kind of minimize their risk of any kind of cancer type of illness? 

PILISZEK – Well that’s a very open ended question. We could spend a lifetime discussing it. But cancer is like the most degenerative of conditions that we can face. So therefore you back up and say, okay, if that’s degenerative, then what we’ve got to do is prevent degeneration in our bodies. And that’s what we’ve got to look at. So that’s where it all stems from: basic nutrition, exercise, and I always bring in the question of hormonal modulation as we get older because as our hormones deplete themselves, and often naturally but sometimes unnaturally because of the unnatural circumstances that we all live in. 

For instance, we live here in Houston, the fourth largest city in the whole United States and the oil and gas capital of the world. What do you think we’re inhaling every day? As a result our immune system is fighting off all these effects of all these toxic products we’re ingesting and being covered by and absorbing so those are the sort of things that you’ve got to avoid. Now if you can’t avoid them because you have to live in a city like Houston then you’ve got to take precautionary measures.

Antioxidants, obviously, because those are very, very important. And there are different ways of producing them. You can, in fact, by our own antioxidant systems, manufacture our own glutathione, but you’ve got to have the basics of that. So what is that? Well you take in an Acetylcysteine which helps us make our own glutathione. 

But we can check all of these levels of the B vitamins, which are water soluble vitamins, including Vitamin C which is an antioxidant; we can check our levels of the fat soluble vitamins; we can check our own antioxidants; we can check all the other important micro-nutrients; and see what we’re lacking. That in itself, if we bring those up to par, will act as an anti-cancer agent. 

DR. J. MICHAEL BENNETT – Dr. Piliszek, if somebody is interested in seeing you and getting an evaluation, when do you recommend that they start incorporating some of these prevention measures or at least be evaluated for these prevention measures? Is there a certain age range?


    
Most common cancers in the United States 2008. See Epidemiology of cancer (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
 

PILISZEK – Well, just to give you a practical example, my youngest anti-aging longevity patient is 25 and my eldest one will be 100 years old on March 20 of this year. That’s the range that I have at the moment. But we do know that we start aging from the moment we are born even though we are still developing up to the age of about 18 to 20. But a lot depends on the circumstances. Genetics play a role but a minimal role now, we only think about 20/25 percent. There are also our nutritional styles, those that we have been made to adopt by our parents, by our upbringing; we also have our exercise styles, too. All these play a role. So it depends on when you want to get started. It depends on your family problems. And oftentimes if there is a genetic influence the parents sometimes bring their children in at a younger age. 

DR. J. MICHAEL BENNETT – And so if a patient wants to see you the number they call is 281-469-4156 and just mention that you heard about Dr. Piliszek on 1560 The Game and he’ll get you in for the full check up, evaluation, and I’d highly recommend it. He’s a brilliant man and he’s got a lot of good information he can tell us in regards to anti-aging, wellness and disease prevention, and we’re definitely going to have him back on the show because there’s a lot more that I wanted to talk to Dr. Piliszek about in regards to stress and disease and yoga and acupuncture and all these other modalities and other treatment options.  

If you have questions about sports nutrition, wellness, or sports medicine, call Dr. Bennett to make an appointment at 281-633-8600 or send us an email.

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Dr. J. Michael Bennett

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