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Navy SEAL divers are the best at what they do.
But they have a problem
that limits their ability to do their mission.
Our research focused on solving the problem
and it led to an unexpected path of discovery
for neurological diseases and cancer.
The problem results from the specialized equipment
that the Navy SEAL divers use,
including the oxygen rebreather.
The advantage of the rebreather is that there are no bubbles
so it's very quiet
and helps the SEAL evade detection from the enemy.
The disadvantage of the oxygen rebreather is
that the high levels of oxygen
and the pressure from the undersea environment
causes a potential for a seizure.
These seizures occur with little or no warning
and there is no effective mitigation strategy to prevent them.
So the question we ask is why do the seizures occur
and how can we prevent them.
To answer this question required funding
from the Office of Naval Research
to develop a microscope
that was installed inside a hyperbaric chamber,
or a high-pressure chamber.
This chamber could simulate the underwater environment
and the pressure of the underwater environment.
Using this technology
we demonstrated that neurons in the brain,
when subjected to high pressure and high oxygen,
are overstimulated.
The overstimulation of the brain
from the high oxygen and pressure
causes a decrease in brain energy metabolism.
When this happens,
it causes the potential for a seizure.
These oxygen seizures occur with little or no warning
and there is no effective way to prevent them.
These drug resistant seizures
are similar to epilepsy patients
that have drug resistant seizures,
and in the case of patients
they can use a special diet to prevent these seizures.
One example of the patient who used diet is Mike Dancer.
Mike used a variety of antiseizure medication,
and the medication caused severe side effects
and was not able to control his seizures.
So, due to the severe side effects
Mike stopped all the antiseizure medication
and when he did it, he saw an increase
in his seizure frequency.
At about this time Mike discovered
there was is a dietary intervention,
that he could use to control his seizures.
And when he did it, he found a sharp decrease
in his seizure frequency.
I'm happy to say that Mike has been on the diet
for 5 years now,
and he's been managing his epilepsy
for 5 years without medication.
So what is the ketogenic diet?
Compared to a normal diet,
the ketogenic diet is very low in carbohydrates
and it's very high in fat.
People have used the diet for years
to help them regulate their body weight,
reduce their body weight,
and control or reduce their blood glucose levels.
But most importantly,
the ketogenic diet is proven to control seizures,
when drugs fail.
No organization has done more to educate the public
about therapeutic potential of the ketogenic diet
than The Charlie Foundation
started by Hollywood producer Jim Abrahams.
Jim's son Charlie was stricken with seizures.
They were so severe
and no amount of drugs could help him.
So Jim looked into alternative approaches
to manage his son's seizures.
And with his research he discovered
that the ketogenic diet was being used
at Johns Hopkins Hospital,
so it was a treatment that was used
specifically for pediatric epilepsy.
So Jim took Charlie to Johns Hopkins Hospital
and they worked pretty closely with a dietician there,
and within a short amount of time
Charlie's seizures were under control.
And Charlie was actually cured of his epilepsy
at Johns Hopkins Hospital
with the use of the ketogenic diet.
So Charlie is actually off the diet completely today,
and he remains seizure-free.
The ketogenic diet is effective
for a variety of neurological disorders
including Glucose Transporter Type 1 Deficiency Syndrome.
Children with this disorder
lack the ability to transport glucose into the brain.
So their brains are literally starved of glucose
and this causes a potential for seizures.
So it's known that, you know,
the brain can use glucose as the primary fuel,
but it can readily adapt to using ketones for energy.
So in this way the brain is like a hybrid engine, right?
So it uses glucose as the primary fuel
but during periods of limited glucose availability
the brain can readily adapt
to using this alternative fuel source.
So we are exploiting the neuroprotective effects of ketones
by developing ketone supplements for the Navy SEAL divers
for oxygen seizures.
So the advantage of the ketone supplement is
that you can circumvent the need for the dietary restriction
that's required to elevate and sustain
blood levels of ketones.
There are many therapeutic applications of ketones
because nearly all healthy cells in a body
can use ketones for fuel as an alternative energy source.
Surprisingly, cancer cells lack the ability to transition
from using glucose for fuel to using ketones.
So, in a way, cancer cells are like damaged hybrid engines.
They use large amounts of glucose
much more than healthy cells,
and they lack this ability to transition over
to an alternative fuel source.
So we can say that "sugar addiction"
is really the Achilles heel of cancer cells.
This observation inspired me in the lab,
and I asked a question, I wondered,
why very little attention was being given to nutrition
to exploit this weakness of cancer cells.
So, it turns out that the sugar addiction
was actually observed over 80 years ago by Otto Warburg.
So, Otto Warburg did experiments,
he won a Nobel prize for these experiments,
demonstrating that [cancer] cells are damaged in their metabolism
and the damage in their metabolism
results in high amounts of sugar uptake.
More recently, Thomas Seyfried from Boston College
has been a pioneer, really, in validating Warburg's hypothesis
and proving that cancer is a metabolic disease.
In Tom's experiments, he demonstrated
that there is a specific,
metabolic defect of cancer cells as glucose dependency,
and that we can target that
with a variety of non-toxic alternative approaches.
Oncologists target this weakness in cancer cells,
which is excess glucose consumption,
with something called a FGD-PET Scan.
The PET Scan actually shows
the excess consumption of glucose in cancer cells
relative to the healthy tissues surrounding it.
So this allows for the imaging of excess glucose consumption
that oncologists use.
But this information really isn't used
to exploit the cancer for a treatment modality.
The excess glucose consumption of cancer cells
allows them to thrive and proliferate
in a low oxygen environment.
Another interesting observation that we made in the lab
is that high pressures of oxygen
are actually damaging to cancer cells.
We've demonstrated
that when high levels of oxygen are given to cancer cells
that they overproduce oxygen free radicals,
and these are damaging to the cell membrane.
At high magnification we can observe
bumps on the surface of the membrane
that are indicative of membrane damage.
What's most interesting is that the same level of oxygen
that damaged the cancer cells
was non-toxic to the healthy brain cells.
These observations inspired us to test
the combination of the ketogenic diet and hyperbaric oxygen
in a mouse model of metastatic cancer.
The glowing regions on the screen,
show the growth and the spread
of metastatic cancer cells.
This study demonstrated the therapeutic efficacy
of a new, non-toxic, alternative approach
to cancer management.
So what started out as a Navy SEAL project
and then led to a promising mitigation strategy
for the oxygen seizures
in the form of ketone supplements
ultimately led us down a path
to this unexpected discovery.
So the question is,
can we manage cancer with non-toxic strategies?
I believe that we can.
And I've been inspired
by a number of seizure patients and cancer patients
that have used these alternative methods
to manage their incurable diseases.
Future treatments and prevention of many diseases
may fall back on the ancient wisdom of Hippocrates,
when he said, "Let food be thy medicine."
Thank you.
(Applause)