Little Hands, Big Plans - Motherhood and Business

Natural Ways To Support Cancer Care

• Emilia Coto • Season 1 • Episode 22

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We share integrative tools we’ve used and researched while navigating a cancer diagnosis in our family, focusing on simple, accessible steps that can support conventional care or help you act while choosing a path. These are simple therapies that are accessible to most. 

We’ll cover:

Teas & Traditional Herbal Supports

  • Soursop (guanábana) leaf tea
  • Dandelion root extracts
  • Ancient and cultural uses + lab research

Food-Based Anti-Inflammatory Support

  • Black seed oil
  • Aged garlic
  • How families worldwide have used these remedies for centuries

Nutrient Support

  • Vitamin D3 + K2
  • Why deficiencies are extremely common in newly diagnosed patients
  • The Sunshine Trial and immune modulation

Immune-Modulating Mushrooms

  • Turkey tail
  • Maitake
  • What research from Japan and Canada is showing

Supportive Treatments You Can Ask Your Naturopath About

  • Mistletoe therapy
  • Local hyperthermia
  • How they’re used in Europe and integrative clinics

Metabolic Health & Fasting Research

  • Fasting around chemotherapy
  • Time-restricted eating
  • Why researchers are exploring cancer’s metabolic pathways

A Note for Moms: Breastfeeding & Childhood Cancer Prevention Research

Throughout the episode, I also share parts of our family’s story—how traditional Honduran remedies played a role, how my uncle has lived with liver cancer for years, and how faith shaped so many of our decisions.

If you or someone you love is facing a new diagnosis, I hope this gives you both comfort and practical next steps to explore with your care team.

If this episode was helpful, please leave a review, your encouragement helps this show reach more families walking through hard things.

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For other episodes and resources, visit our website at https://littlehandsbigplans.co/pages/podcast

Emilia Coto:

Hi friends, today I am recording a solo episode and it is a little bit different. This episode is going to focus around cancer and specifically natural integrative ideas that people look into. Sometimes people that are just diagnosed with cancer don't want to go the conventional route right away, or sometimes, even when going the conventional route, want to have other things to help support their body through those treatments, or just want to explore something else entirely. So I thought I would tell you a little bit about what I've been learning alongside my mom as she navigates this. And it's storytelling. I'm gonna tell you some of the research and the benefits behind a lot of the things that we've tried. But just remember, I'm not a doctor. It's not medical advice. It's just I wish that I had a short episode that I could listen to at the beginning when we were exploring that would summarize and just give me a little snippet about the things we could start doing. Also, there it to me it was alarming when I learned the rates of cancer in both Canada and the United States. And so I've also put in a lot of thought on how I would I want to focus on living a lifestyle that supports my body and hopefully preventing a cancer. And so, to give you some of the statistics, in Canada, about two in five people are expected to be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime, and about one in four are expected to die from it. And then in the United States, two in five Americans, the same as Canada, will develop cancer over their lifetime, with 40% of that being men, 39% women, and roughly one in six will die from cancer. So there is a lot of benefit in knowing that of natural things that you might consider adding into your supplement regime or diet to try to prevent that, especially if you're a young parent like myself. I also wanted to just share a story that when someone is diagnosed with cancer, a lot of the times they will ask what causes cancer or what they could have done to prevent that. And I think at least in our case, when we were asking these questions, it's because we wanted to know what lifestyle modifications could improve our situation. And if there's a cost, then it should be true that lifestyle modifications would also be helpful. But the response is often, oh, nothing. It's nothing you did wrong. And I think it's because that's a kind and compassionate answer, but it actually leaves the person that receives this answer feeling pretty hopeless because then if you could have done nothing to prevent it, then what can you do to improve your situation? So that also, that response was something that inspired a lot of this episode. So one of the first things that we learned about is sour soap leaf in Spanish is guanabana, and it's a tropical fruit. It people eat the fruit, and you can also make tea from the leaves. For example, it's a very common tree in Honduras where I'm from. And there is evidence in lab and animal studies where graviola and specifically the leaf extracts show anti-tumor activity across several cancer cell lines and models. And in rural parts of Honduras, the Caribbean, South America, and also Southeast Asia, the leaves are very commonly used in traditional medicine to treat a lot of ailments, including fever, parasitic infections, digestive complaints, rheumatism, and cancer. Because of this traditional use, it's very easy to add into your routine. You can get tea or extract, and you can just simply add as a tea, as a daily tea, or just part of your routine to do something supportive while you wait for results. For example, it's safe while breastfeeding as well, from what I've read. The other thing about this that I have a personal experience with is I have an uncle that was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2018. And while there's a lot to his story that I could tell, and I would love to do an episode on this further down the line, he's been living with liver cancer, which tends to have a very short life expectancy since 2018, at least, could be longer. And the only things that he takes are sour soap tea in the morning and at night, and in garlic, which garlic is another one of the things that I'm going to cover later on. But this is definitely a tea that I had never heard of before, and something that I've added as part of my regular routine, and that my mom has also now takes on a daily basis. Another helpful tea that we found is dandelion root tea, and it is a common root that is roasted and made into a tea or a tincture. And for cancer specifically, in mouse models, dandel dandelion dandelion root extract induced cancer cell death and slowed tumor growth by a lot, 90% reduction on tumor in mice. And it's again something just easy, soothing, that is really easy to add. And to my knowledge, there's nothing harmful about dandelion root tea. And it is actually also used around the world, for example, in Chinese herbal clinics to ease inflammation and abscesses, and then it's used by European herbalists for the liver and digestive support in North America. It's also used often as a tonic. There's a lot of the plant that is used for by herbalists or in Chinese medicine. So the a little bit more about the study on mice is that they were fed dandelion root extracts, and the mice had colon cancer, and then there was a 90% reduction, and the extract selectively activated death in cancer cells while sparing the normal cells. And in cell models with gastric cancer, the dandelion has been shown to slow the migration and proliferation of the cancer. They've also done studies for triple negative breast cancer lines and how it affects the pathway and the way that cancer metabolizes. So there it there's a lot of positive studies that it could be helpful. And what I like about it is that again, it's just something that's very easy and to add to just your daily rhythm. Just add some dandelion tingling. It tastes pretty good as well. The next thing I wanted to cover is black seed oil. And it tastes like cumin. It's traditionally used in Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures. And the active compound is thymolquinone. And I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly, but it is considered a multi-targeted, so it influences cell death, inhibits andgiogenesis, and blocks invasion migration pathways. So the main thing is that it interferes with tumor-supporting signaling. And the thing that made it extra interesting for us is that it's been studied in multiple myeloma and breast cancer lines frequently, and it is often used to enhance some chemotherapies in cell models. And it's one of those things where sometimes people add it to their salad because it has that nutty taste. There are some cultures that use it as well as part of their food. And so in the Arabic tradition, black seed is called the seed of blessing, often quoted in traditional medicine as a cure for everything except death. And so some of the studies that we found interesting is that in lung cancer stem cell models, thymquinone suppressed stem cell traits, which is exciting because stem cell-like cancer cells are tied to relapse and metastasis often. Another one they did on rats, and it showed that tumor incidence and size were significantly reduced with the ones that were using the thymoquino thymoquinone versus the ones that were not. In Brazil, there was a study that showed that the tumor it that the oil helped to reduce tumor volume. It delayed mortality and it inhibited metastasis in tumor models. And the last thing that is highlighted in the research is that it's selective, so it targets the death of cancer cells, but not healthy cells. Very promising and again, very easy to add if you like the taste. You can add it to salads, you can get some of the paste from Middle Eastern storage to eat. The next thing that we learned, which was very interesting, is that my mom was tested for her D3. And what we learned is that a lot of can't people that get diagnosed with cancer have historically very depleted levels of D3. And not just with her, but there's multiple observational studies that have found that a large proportion of people diagnosed with cancer have low vitamin D levels at baseline. It can be seen in breast, colon, prostate cancer. And some studies show that up to 70 or 80% of newly diagnosed cancer patients have insufficient or deficient vitamin D levels. And if you live in a place like Michigan or anywhere in Canada, you definitely, I think, could benefit from having your levels checked on a regular basis to make sure that your levels are not at our good level. And why is vitamin D3 important and as it relates to cancer specifically is that it supports immune surveillance. So it helps the body to recognize and respond to abnormal cells. It encourages the differentiation of cells so that they grow up and stop dividing like crazy. It plays a role in program cell death and it starves tumors of their blood supply. It's anti-inflammatory. And higher vitamin D status has been linked to lower incidence and better outcomes in certain cancers, such as colorectal and breast. It looked at metastatic colorectal cancer patients and found that those receiving higher doses of vitamin D3 had longer progression-free survival compared to those on standard doses. And then the K2, why it matters when taking it with D3, is that it helps with absorption and activation of calcium and it ensures that the calcium goes to the right places to the bones and teeth and not soft tissue. Beyond bone health, vitamin K2 also has its own independent anti-cancer signals. It can influence cell death as well, and it can inhibit tumor growth pathways and support vascular and immune health. And it is a supplement that is very easy to add. I was having a hard time remembering to take the vitamin D, and my doctor recently gave me one that I just have to take once a week. So if you forget like me, there are options. All right, another interesting one, again, food-based, lifestyle-based, easy to add, is mushroom extracts and specifically turkey tail and maitake mushroom. And how we heard of Meitake Mushroom is actually through my brother, who, through his work, was working with a company called Shogun, which is based in the London, Ontario area. And they specialize in cultivating organic black maitake mushrooms. And it's their cultivation is specifically for therapeutic purposes. And there is a lot of research that in the London in Canada they're doing on how this can improve cancer outcomes. The other one that's been studied a lot is turkey tail. And it's used a lot also in Chinese medicine. It's been used in Japan and China for decades as adjunctive in cancer treatment. And it is actually officially approved in Japan as an adjunct to cancer therapy. So there are a lot of promising clinical trials that are combining turkey tail with chemotherapy, and it's improving the patient's outcomes. And a lot of the studies that have been doing, there have been doing is that it can improve your body's own immune system to impact health outcomes. And so it's something that essentially helps your body fight off the cancer better than it would on its own if you were not taking it. So in traditional medicine, it's not seen as a cure, it's seen as a resilience builder. But there are some countries that use it more therapeutically. And it essentially makes it so that your body, the tumor environment, is more uncomfortable when you're using these supplements, either on their own or in conjunction with traditional treatment. The next one I want to talk about is aged garlic. And as I mentioned earlier in the episode, how I heard about aged garlic is that my uncle that has been living with metastasized liver cancer since 2018 told me that the only two supplements that he takes on a daily basis are the sour soap, leaf tea twice a day, and garlic, pure garlic for him specifically. But the benefit of aged garlic is that it removes the odor. So if you don't want to have a strong garlic smell to you by taking this on a daily basis, the aged garlic helps with that. And garlic has been used for it's one of the oldest medicines that we have used, and it's something that has lots of benefits. And some examples is that in ancient Egypt, it was considered so valuable at some point that it was even used as currency. Garlic was considered very powerful. In Greece and Rome, athletes and soldiers ate gar raw garlic before competitions and battles as a tonic for strength and courage. In traditional Chinese and Japanese medicines, garlic has been used for thousands of years to support cardiovascular health, digestion, immune defense, and cleansing the blood. In Ayurveda medicine, it is garlic is believed to increase heat, circulation, immunity while clearing toxins. And so, you know, and as a mom, you might use garlic in pulses and teas oils to clear infections like coughs and fatigue. And garlic really is uh helpful even if you don't have cancer, but for cancer specifically, it's supposed to help your immune system. And so whether you do conventional or non-conventional cancer treatment, it it has been shown to help your immune system, and it has been shown in clinical studies to have protective effects against showing some progression and recurrence of cancers. It is also being explored, again, for immune-supportive chemo-preventative properties. So it's supposed to also help you if you do choose to go the conventional route. And it's considered an antioxidant that is very powerful in helping to make the internal environment be less friendly to tumor growth. And if you don't want to add daily pills, it's also something easy that you can add to your diet because it's tasty. The next thing that I wanted to discuss is called mistletoe therapy. And how we came to discover mistletoe therapy is that when a cancer patient goes through a PET scan, they will put a radioactive thing that has sugar or sugar-like properties. And so when a tumor reacts to these sugar sugars or sugar-like properties, they call it FDG reactive. And I had heard that vitamin C infusions are used quite often for cancer patients because vitamin C acts like a sugar, it essentially tricks the cancer cells and then induces their death because it thinks it's sugar and then the vitamin C is used. But when we spoke with the integrative naturopath, when the tumor is non-FDG reactive, as was the case for my mother, it doesn't work as well. And so mistletoe therapy is an alternative for to do the similar thing for tumors that are not FDG reactive. It's a plant, but in integrative oncology, it actually has a lot of history and how it's been used. And how it works is that you can either get it through an IV at a naturopath's office or you can get it injected. What our naturopath said is that if you go, so it's more expensive if you do the IV, but if you can't switch back and forth because it can your body can develop an allergy. So if you aren't if you're looking for prevention, you can just you can do either. But if you want to keep the option open of doing the IV, you shouldn't switch right away to the intramuscular route. It is used very widely in Europe, Germany, Switzerland, and often used as an adjunct to conventional cancer care. And in Germany, actually, more than 50% of cancer patients receive integrative cancer care using mistletoe therapy. And what the research shows is that it can improve the quality of life. In 2019, a systematic review found consistent improvements in fatigue, energy, emotional well-being, and appetite of patients receiving mistletoe therapy alongside conventional treatments. It activates the immune system. So it enhances the immune system and helps to improve resilience, especially if you're going to do chemo or radiation. It also has potential survival benefits. So these are observational studies. But in these observational studies, in done with breast, lung, and pancreatic cancer, they've reported longer survival for mistletoe-treated patients versus controls, and particularly in early to mid-stage disease. There also is research to show that it eases the tolerance of treatment. So there's better tolerance of treatments when people are using mistletoe therapy because it eases a lot of the side effects of chemo and radiation. And then there are ongoing clinical trials in that are being done in North America as well. So it's got a lot of promise. And if you are interested, there are there's definitely a naturopath in St. Catharines that does that, that does it. And there are many in Toronto and I believe in Michigan as well. That's the area where I'm at. But if you just Google it in your area, you'll probably find a naturopath that can support you if that's an option that you want to look into. All right. The next thing that we learned also from our naturopath was hyperthermia. And what hypothermia does is that it gently raises the temperature of body tissues, mostly very localized to where your tumor is, in order to promote cell death. So most tumors, what we've learned, are heat sensitive, and cancer cells often have poorer blood supply and less efficient heat dissipation than healthy cells. So this makes them more vulnerable to heat stress. And so that's why things like saunas are very beneficial. But hyperthermia you can get from a naturopath, and they heat up the tumor in order to make you can do it at the same time, for example, as radiation or chemotherapy. And it essentially is meant to enhance the treatment more. It stimulates immune activity, but it's specifically meant to put stress and death of the cancer cells. So it can push the cancer cells to die. And there is some research that has been done in breast cancer, head and neck cancer, and melanoma to show that hyperthermia enhances the effectiveness of radiation therapy without increasing side effects. It can also be seen as a chemotherapy booster. So it improves local blood flow and vessel permeability. And so it that has been studied in soft tissue sarcomas, cervical and bladder cancers with encouraging outcomes. And clinical trials are also showing how it can improve the immune system. So, overall, whether you choose to do it with or without traditional cancer treatment, it has been shown to be effective. And if you are not in a position to need something like that, it's just a reminder of how heating up your body, whether through exercise or through saunas, can have really important and positive effects on your body. Next, I want to talk about DMSO. And that is something that I had never heard of before, but it is, I'm learning a lot more about it. I came across it through there's a substack called The Forgotten Side of Medicine, and it's a doctor that writes a lot of really good research on this topic. So if you're interested in a really deep dive, that's where I would recommend. There's also a book called Healing with DMSO that I got on Amazon that was also really good and talked a lot about the different history, the safety, and the different ways that it is used. So it's something that is pretty easy to get. You can get it off Amazon, and people most commonly use it as for pain and anti-inflammation. So when you see it on Amazon, you'll likely see it advertised for like tennis elbow or soft tissue injuries. But essentially, it helps things to get deeper into your skin. It's used as an anti-inflammatory and antioxidant. So it's known for calming your system. And so if you have a significant amount of pain because of cancer, you can use it. And you can also use it in combination with other natural therapies to get it deeper into your system. In traditional medicine, they are studying how DMSO can improve the penetration of certain chemotherapy drugs and natural compounds to allow a more localized impact and potentially less systemic toxicity because it can, for example, protect your body during radiation as well. In culture models, DMSO combined with compounds like vitamin C, flavonoids, or cytotoxic drugs enhanced the effect on the tumor cell. And because cancer thrives in inflamed microenvironments, the fact that it's an anti inflammatory can help create a less favorable condition for tumor progression. So again, it's something that is easy to obtain. It's natural, it comes from the processing of wood. And It's something that you can obtain if you wish to try it or if you're having a lot of pain to see if it's something that can help you with the pain as well. All right. The last one I want to do is on fasting. And fasting is something that has been researched more and more lately as how it can help cancer. So there's some people, for example, that fast before chemo. In early clinical studies, patients who fasted for two to four days around chemotherapy reported fewer side effects like less fatigue, nausea, and in some cases, better tolerance of treatment. There is also fasting mimicking diets. So they are also supposed to have been studied to slow tumor growth, to enhance response to therapy, and protect normal tissue. And the main thing about this is that a lot of people, there's more and more studies coming out that show that cancer may have metabolic origins. So insulin resistance and poor metabolic health can increase cancer risk and cancer outcomes. And so adding that into your body essentially helps by depriving the cancer cells from one of their favorite fuels. And it can cancer cells can have a harder time adapting to the stress of nutrient scarcity when you are in fasting. It also helps to decrease your inflammation and it can it can trigger STEM and immune cell renewal. Something that's interesting is that most religions around the world have some type of fasting as part of their spiritual practice. And so it can be beneficial from the spiritual side as well. And so some ideas, if you are interested in adding fasting, is some people do time restrictive eating. So for example, only eating for 8 to 12 hours a day and then fasting for the rest. In the chemotherapy clinical trial settings, the fasting was 24 to 72 hours before or after chemotherapy. And then there's also the fasting mimicking diets, which are tend to focus on plant-based food and calorie restrictions, but still having some type of nutrition. And there's also some clinics that offer therapeutic fasting programs where you actually go there and fast under medical supervision. And lastly, if you are a mom, because I know a lot of the listeners are moms like myself, and you're wondering one of the one thing that you can do to try to prevent childhood cancer is breastfeeding. And there is a lot of research around breastfeeding and how if you breastfeed, if you're able to for six months or more, it is associated with roughly 14 to 25% lower risk of childhood leukemia. And the research around it hypothesizes that it is because of the immune benefits and microbiome benefits that breastfeeding contributes to a child, which are for life. If you're here and you recently had a cancer diagnosis, I want to just provide some encouragement and some ideas, some easy things that you can integrate while you are trying to figure out next steps or figuring out what treatment path you want to walk in. Most of the things that I've done are teased or food-based that are really easy to add, and also some interesting ones that if you want to work with a natural path, you can ask about. So I hope this is helpful. I wish I had found one similar to this when we were trying to figure things out. So if it's been helpful, please leave me a review and thank you for listening.