Refusing To Be Rushed + Resiliency with Dale Atkinson (Part 2)

He coined the word “scansiety” because ordinary anxiety doesn’t cover what happens when your life is measured in scan dates and result calls. We sit down with Dale Atkinson, a stage four esophageal cancer patient who refuses to let fear or rushed timelines make his decisions, and he walks us through the most important shift he made: moving from helpless waiting to evidence based action.

Dale shares how grief, family pressure, and a brutal prognosis pushed him into deep research, from PubMed papers to metabolic therapy concepts and the Warburg effect. We dig into how next generation sequencing and chemosensitivity testing can map cancer pathways and reveal personalised options, and why repurposed drugs and off label medications like metformin keep showing up in oncology research even when they’re not commonly discussed in clinic. He also explains what “complementary care” looks like in real life: building a holistic protocol with an integrative oncologist and an expert naturopath, adding tools like hyperbaric oxygen therapy, red light therapy, infrared sauna, cold exposure, and movement, all intended to support standard of care rather than replace it.

We also go straight at the hard stuff: pushback from medical systems, fear tactics, gaps in informed consent, and why patients deserve clear explanations of risks and side effects, including immunotherapy concerns like liver inflammation with pembrolizumab. Dale closes with practical guidance for patients and caregivers, from taking time before major treatment decisions to simple breathwork and five minute resets that protect mindset and hope.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:06

All of us reach a point in time where we are depleted and need to somehow find a way to reignite the fire within. But how do we spark that flame? Welcome to Reignite Resilience, where we will venture into the heart of the human spirit. We'll discuss the art of reigniting our passion and strategies to stoke our enthusiasm. And now here are your hosts, Natalie Davis and Pamela Cassie.

SPEAKER_02 0:46

I know that like as you kind of gone through the season, right? We're we're looking at your wife's diagnosis and her procedure and your diagnosis and your mom's passing and your own personal procedure. And and you you mentioned that you took yourself through getting some uh degrees just to get a better understanding, like from the the psychological piece and some of that training or at least education. What were some of the modalities that you use like to help you through? Because keeping it together at your son's birthday party, um, and then waiting until everyone's gone to bed to have a glass of wine, that it's a tremendous amount of strength.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Um, I don't think I waited until they went to bed.

SPEAKER_03 1:32

Yeah, cake and wine.

SPEAKER_02 1:35

Fair. Fair, exactly. What are some of these practices that you that you've discovered that were helpful for you? And and maybe not even just on that day, but just as you've gone through, you know, just the waiting of everything, right? It's like just waiting and waiting and waiting constantly.

Living With Scansiety And Waiting

Grief Sparks A Research Mission

Metabolic Therapies And Sequencing Insights

Building A Complementary Integrative Protocol

Results That Changed The Prognosis

SPEAKER_00 1:54

So, I mean, uh, that's a bit of a difficult one to deal with even now. Um, there isn't really any mindset changes, there isn't really any modality that can help you with the waiting. Um we in our household have now just ended up coining it scansiety. So a mixture of anxiety and scans. There isn't really anything you can do, you just end up getting used to it, sadly. And every single time, even now, I get apprehensive about it, I get worried about it, I don't sleep in a day or two before I get scan results. It it it never stops. Um but I think stripping it back to other modalities and other things, so getting past the birthday, etc. Uh, I think at the sort of point of my mum's death, I think the grief, weirdly, in the opposition to what most people would think, instead of the grief making things harder, I think the grief actually is what helped to spur me into looking at other modalities. It's what gave me the sort of lens to pick things up through, and it gave me the fuel to do so because I was dealing with such an emotional drain and strain at that point between trying to make funeral arrangements, trying to deal with a partner who was still recovering, having to be the primary care for my two little boys. I was also then, because of the diagnosis and because of everything that was going on, we decided to wrap up the business, the the consultancy that I'd been working so hard on for years at that point. Um, we cut off a multi-million pound contract in order to do so. And it was also then looking at the finances and all these other bits and pieces and the strain and stress of all of that. Weirdly, mum's grief on top of that, is what then gave me the key to be able to essentially hide from a lot of it, as bad as that sounds. And by hide from it, instead of just going and cuddling up under the duvet and you know, not paying attention to the world and letting it just sort of wash me by, my brain instead, because of my background and because of what I used to do for a living, decided to focus on research. So, in the probably first two and a half to three months after everything happened, I jumped into every single PubMed article in any way related to cancer that I could possibly find, and especially to offesophagy or cancer. Um, and having had the conversation with the the oncologist and and surgeon that told me I was palliative care only, that they didn't expect to cure or even really extend my life by very much. Um I should also clarify that they they did tell me in that meeting that if I accepted chemotherapy and immunotherapy on a palliative basis, that they would only expect it to extend my life by possibly a month or two. Um and they also told me the chemotherapy was going to be hell. So I also went off and researched the chemotherapy. And with that, I started to come across these weird little tidbits of information. Um, first of all, it was looking at ways to make chemotherapy possibly more effective and to reduce side effects so I could spend more time with my little boys. And through that sort of little rabbit hole, I then came across some of the metabolic therapies and uh and sort of processes and approaches to things. And I started to work out that actually there was a lot more information out there that I could piece together bits of that I could prove the evidence and the science of. And a lot of these are phase three trial approved, which is sort of the gold standard when it comes to medical proof, as it were, and evidence. Um, and some of it's based on Nobel Prize-winning pieces of biology, etc. Things like the Warburg, uh the Warburg effect created by Otto Wahlberg back in the 1920s and 30s. A lot of these are really sort of interesting bits of science that exist in their own little silos. And I started to go through, pick out the pieces that made sense to me, research the bits that I didn't quite yet understand or felt could be more interesting than potentially they were being made out to be. And I started to stitch together this little sort of patchwork quilt of bits and pieces to try and initially reduce the side effects, reduce the toxicity, and to help me have a better quality of life. And then as I started doing that, I came across more and more information that led me to believe actually there was a whole nother stream of thinking that maybe this could be not curative, but it could extend my life quite significantly. Um, and with that, I ended up then finding out about what was called next generation sequencing. So essentially, there is there's multiple different types of sequencing you can do, but this one specifically, which was from a company called Astron Health, and they use an underlying test called the datar exacta test. They got hold of the biopsy that the NHS had taken during my endoscopy. They got hold of that piece of my tumour. They also took a liquid biopsy, so blood. They run that through a large set of tests, and they can essentially map out the individual pathways that your cancer has. So looking at whether it's glycolytic, i.e. whether it runs on sugar, because not all cancers do. Some do, but not all by a long shot. Some run on amino acids, like uh prostate cancers are famous for that. Um, it looks at whether you have the BRAF and the BRACA genes, which are synonymous with breast cancer and other male cancers as well. It looks at all these little bits and pieces, and it pieces together sort of a map of what your cancer is, what's fueling it, why it's fueling it, and then it kicks out a sort of an output of supplements, medications, treatments that will actually fight your cancer. Um, and within that it also does chemosensitivity testing, etc. So I'd come across that and decided that before I did chemotherapy, I wanted to know essentially how well my body would react to it. So I went forward and did the next generation sequencing and the chemosensitivity testing. And that then gave me this really sort of rough plan, as it were, at that point in time of off-label medications. So medications that I used for a purpose other than what they were originally intended. And I mean, the the primary example I always use is metformin, which is a very well-known synonymous uh diabetes drug. It's used to you know monitor insulin level, uh, sorry, manage insulin levels and reduce blood sugar. That in a cancer in an oncological setting is overarching, it's seemed to give in somewhere between a 20 and 35% increase in survival rates if you use it in oncology. And for most major uh healthcare systems, it is signed off and available for use in oncology. It's just not many oncologists use it, not many oncologists want to or know about it. And because it's an off-label medication or a repurpose medication, a lot of them don't feel particularly comfortable in doing so because it's not generally part of the scientific teaching, as you know, getting your PhD, becoming a doctor. You don't get taught how to do these sorts of things and how to pick up drugs outside of your natural remit. So a lot of them don't. And this testing showed that things like that were extremely effective in my specific case, and that my genetic setup happened to be, I happened to be extremely lucky, essentially, that so many different avenues and so many different pathways were available to pick up and essentially stop my cancer through. So that's what we started to do. Um, I then took that testing. I found an absolutely incredible naturopath, so a natural medicine doctor and nutritionist. She's one and the same person, uh, called Amanda King, who has just been absolutely phenomenal. Her knowledge of this space is beyond anybody else I've ever met. Um, and she works under a lady called Nature Winters, who some of your people will or may or may not be aware of. Um, she was the former head of the Terrain Institute of Metabolic Health, really brilliant lady. Um, so Amanda became part of my core team, and her ability to pick out the minutia in the details and be able to piece together bits and pieces and help me on this journey has just been second to none. And then atop her, I also found uh having spoken to hundreds of integrative oncologists worldwide, um, I then discovered a chap called Dr. Harry Harankuan, who is a truly brilliant integrative oncologist. And he took the output of my Astron report and essentially helped me to create a plan. So we sat down, we worked out what I wanted to get out of my treatment, not just the standard conversation of you want to live longer, here's what you do, which is what happens with most oncologists and doctors. Harry sat me down and said, Look, do you want quality of life? Do you want quantity of life? Do you want a mixture of the two? Where are you going? What are you thinking? How experimental do you want to be? What else are you doing alongside of this? And all these really sort of brilliant questions. And with that, and with a rough idea of what I'd already pieced together myself, we created a basically a holistic sort of plan to go alongside the standard of care. And I hasten to add, none of this was ever as an alternative. This isn't alternative medicine. This is very much complementary. It is there to increase the efficacy, reduce the toxic load, and just overall make the standard of care better as opposed to replace it. This was never a conversation about replacement, it was always a conversation about stitching the best of medicine from all parts together to give the best outcome for me. And we managed to. We picked together hyperbaric oxygen therapy, uh, red light therapy. Excuse me. I use a pulse T EMF mat. I've got an infrared sauna in my garden room. I have an ice bath I use, all these different bits and pieces, alongside the off-labour medications, the supplements. I also, as you can clearly see behind me, have a boxing gym I built in my house. I have vibration plates, I've got a full weight setup and treadmill and all sorts of things. Um I pieced together this big, fat protocol plan, as it were, mixed together. Um and in the January of last year, we started it in full. And I went from spending most of Christmas, thankfully not Christmas Day, but a lot of the Christmas period, um, in hospital. Um, unfortunately, to the point where because I was in hospital so much and my partner was still recovering, we actually had to give up our dog. We had a a two-year-old Great Dane puppy called Duke, who bless him, I I loved that dog so incredibly dearly. He was my boy, but we had to give him up because I couldn't be here to look after him. Anna couldn't even reach into the freezer because he was raw-fed. We couldn't reach into the freezer, Anna couldn't get into the freezer to feed him in the evenings. She couldn't walk him because obviously a 70 plus kilo dog, if it pulled her once, she'd be back in hospital and we couldn't take that risk. So he sadly had to go back to his breeder. We were at that sort of stage. Um, and then January, I started my protocol in full. And within about three months, um, I went from having a roughly 9.2 to 9.4 centimetre main tumour in my esophagus. Um, I had multiple secondaries uh from my reports, etc. We believe there was a 4.2 centimetre, I think it was, secondary on my aorta, and then a 3.6 centimeter one on the neck of my pancreas, both really bad places to have secondaries, especially the aorta. Um, and then I had somewhere between sort of eight and eight and twelve lymph nodes, I think it was 10 and 12 lymph nodes that were involved as well. Um, that's where I was in the January when I started. My first scan after starting my protocol in about the March time, um, we found that most of my metastases had disappeared completely. All the lymph nodes were back to normal. Um, the two secondaries had virtually disappeared completely. Um, and my primary tumour had dropped by about 30%. Rolling another few months, and you know, we'd been away on holiday and whatever else during that summer. We tried to make the most of our lives, as you do when you're you've got this sort of pending doom hanging over you. We tried to make some memories with our kids. Um, came back in about the July time and did another scan, and everything had vanished. I was left with, and according to the report, it says some distal thickening of the esophageal wall. Um, unfortunately, having picked up a few viruses and all sorts of choice of having kids in nursery, I'm back to having one lymph node that is being stubborn again, um, that's ever so slightly inflamed, like a millimeter or two, enough that they think it is cancerous, but they can't really tell and they can't really test and all these sorts of things. But as it stands, I am very close to no evidence of disease, despite having been told that that would never be the case for me. And sadly, with esophageal cancer, it's one of the top deadliest as well. And I think the survival rate of you know, all stage diagnoses is only something like a 19% survival after two years and a sub-5% survival after five years for all patients across all stages. So you can imagine as a stage four patient, your prognosis and your survival chance is is astronomically low. Um I my oncologist even told me at one point that I had more chance of winning the lottery than I did surviving two years. And uh, as you might be able to gather, my answer to which was here, hold my off-label medications and watch this.

Facing Pushback And Fear Tactics

SPEAKER_03 15:21

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Give me a challenge and I will rise to it. Accept it. What I love is that you know people will either do one thing or other. Uh, some of them are just like, okay, they just accept this diagnosis. And what you did is you focused on what you had control over, which was just gonna do research. I'm just gonna learn as much as I can about this. And then through that research, you started to uncover things. And so what do the doctors say now when you're yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:46

So I should probably point out during this that uh probably in about what were we, late November, early December uh 2024, when I sat my oncologist, my formal NHS oncologist, this is down and said, Look, this is my plan, this is what I want to do. I was very open and honest with them. And their reaction was well, probably as a lot of people would expect, but I didn't. I thought, well, I'm a an intelligent person, I'm communicating evidence here. Of course, they're going to at least consider it. No. Right.

SPEAKER_02 17:19

You're advocating for yourself, you're not just going down a rabbit hole, right? It's just here is evidence-based research. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

And I'm not the person who goes, Well, I saw it on Google. I went ahead and found the papers and cited the research and came up with a list of why, and I could explain the science so they knew enough to understand it all. And I sat my oncologist down and said, Look, this is what I want to do. Their automatic reaction was, You're stupid. This is dangerous. Don't you dare do this, otherwise, we will pull your care completely. Um, yeah, they they made an outright threat to pull my care if I went down this route. To which, and I'm not going to swear on camera, but you can imagine my reaction. Um, we ended up having one of the senior nurses in the room, and they ended up getting a nutritionist involved. And I mean, to point out the nutritionist's advice was to eat lots of ice cream and chocolate to try and put on weight for chemotherapy. Every piece of science that I'd read at that point in time said the absolute opposite, and it's the worst human possible thing you can do is fill yourself with sugar because it causes the inflammation. Absolutely, which whether you're of the school of thought that sugar causes cancer and inflames cancer or not, it's still a very bad idea in terms of inflation and in terms of what it does to the body. And I had an an actual, an actual fully qualified PhD nutritionist telling me that this was the best advice the NHS had to offer and that they advised that I follow it. And I said, Do you know what? No.

SPEAKER_02 18:54

No, absolutely not.

SPEAKER_00 18:56

Not a chance. I said, if you're gonna pull my care, well, I've only got a year to live either way, what if I got to lose? I said, but I'm not doing this.

SPEAKER_02 19:03

Yeah. Well, and and Dale, you you actually took my question, and because um, I had a friend that kind of went through the same uh and was looking at alternative routes, um, and kind of was had met head-on with the same response, like in terms of like the holistic care practitioners playing well with like the oncologist, um, or even your general practitioner, um, it didn't really exist. And so it sounds like you kind of went through a similar experience of either you'll go through our protocol for treatment, or we're not treating you.

SPEAKER_00 19:36

Yeah. Yeah. They they threatened me with it. What I very quickly realized is having spent a career as a compliance officer, you know, my job was to investigate the law. I I can read legal papers, I can read the law, I can understand legislation pretty well because I did it for 20 years. So I went off and actually read up on the legals and they they legally couldn't pull my care. And as soon as I understood that, as soon as I understood that there were mechanisms in place to prevent this from happening, and that I could every you know, cause and case to to raise a case against them if they tried and if they actually went through with this, it gave me a lot of confidence that actually this is just posturing. And unfortunately, it's something I've since found. So, uh, for a bit of context here, I speak to and I do a lot of advocate work, I speak to somewhere between one and three, sometimes in five patients, pretty much every single day now. Um, you know, it's not for me to give a direct advice. I don't give people protocols, I'm not selling anything. I just try to give people hope and try to tell them that there is possibilities out there and direct them to the right professionals to help them.

SPEAKER_04 20:44

Yeah.

Advocacy Work And A New Charity

SPEAKER_00 20:44

And as part of that, plus my journey, we have found that fear tactics are unfortunately really widespread. And it's not just the UK, it's the US, it's pretty much every major Western healthcare system uses fear tactics to push people into things. And they're also, and this sounds horrible in the way I'm going to put it across, but I'll have to explain it afterwards. They also like to obfuscate the truth. So I was never told, so looking at immunotherapy specifically, I was never told that there were dangers to it, there were risks to it, that there were, you know, life-limiting side effects potentially from immunotherapy. It's never discussed that things like liver inflammation. So I'm on an immunotherapy called Pembrolizimab, which I think in the US is called Ketruder. Um, it's a relatively widely used one. And I was never told, and I asked directly because it's part of my nature, I asked directly what the side effects, the risks, the dangers were, and I categorically made sure to ask about liver inflammation, and I was thought that's not really a problem. The science, and if you actually look into PubMed, etc., there are a huge number of both mortalities as well as you know, people suffering of long-term issues and reduced overall survival rates caused by liver inflammation out of immunotherapies. That's not to say immunotherapies aren't fantastic, and I'm not in any way saying don't take them by any means, way, shape, or form. What I'm trying to indicate here is unfortunately the medical system as it stands at the moment is broken because they don't tell patients the risk that they are under. They don't actually stop to explain the full remit that they're meant to. And as I see it, an informed patient who actually has all the data in front of them can make a real decision about their life, which is their prerogative to do so. That should not be on the doctor to decide what information they should or shouldn't give to people in order to pressure them in to any form of treatment whatsoever. And I think it's a horrendous practice that takes place far too often in this modern society, and it needs to stop. And the only way for it to stop is people like me coming and talking on shows like that.

SPEAKER_03 22:57

So here we are. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so how are you reaching these individual patients right now? Are you doing that speaking in front of groups or how are you reaching them?

SPEAKER_00 23:08

So very early on, uh, because I had quite a big LinkedIn presence through my work and through through what I did for a living, I was around to five or ten thousand people, not big, big, but a few people on there. I put out a post to say, look, I've had to stop my business. I'm stepping away from everything. And I just expected to, you know, I was just trying to cut down a bit of a workload, trying to deal with family life and everything else. And I thought, you know, there's lots of people getting in touch with me all the time. If I put this up, people will stop. It it had the opposite effect.

SPEAKER_03 23:36

Let's hear it. That's like, I don't think that's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_00 23:39

Two and a half million people in the space of about I think it was about 13, 14 days. Two and a half million people saw that post. And I woke up one morning to 13,000 direct messages from people all over the world offering help, offering solace, offering their souls and their lives and everything. Sadly, I don't think I have still managed to go back to all of those messages because I started going through 10 a day and 13,000 over 10 a day, plus all the new ones I get through. I think the total I ended up with 40,000,000 messages over the space of about six months. Um I am still trying to work my way through them, but it will probably never finish. Um and I realized very quickly that first of all, there wasn't a voice like mine out there. Um, I also went looking for a voice like mine, and I found nobody my age, similar sort of persuasion, similar sort of focus, as it were. I said persuasion in terms of evidence-based, who was looking at the science, the evidence. Um I found one or two people in this space very roughly, but with a different sort of take than me. And those people were people like Jane McClelland, uh, the author of How to Starve Your Cancer, and your best selling times, and she's now a good friend of mine. I found one or two other people in this space, like Dr. Caldfelt in the US and uh Dr. Thomas Seafried, who was recently on the Diary of a CEO podcast, etc. There were a few people like that out there, but there was nobody in my position as a stage four cancer patient, a younger cancer patient as well, uh, going through it and sharing their direct experience of what they were doing, why they were doing it, what they were looking at, why they were looking at it, and it wasn't my natural sort of want or stance to start sharing, but I found myself doing it for to try and help other people.

SPEAKER_03 25:33

Yeah, because I imagine the average person, it's gonna be incredibly overwhelming to not only have this diagnosis looming over you, knowing that or believing that you know you're gonna live for a year, 11 months, whatever it's gonna be, and then the overwhelming amount of data and trying to siphon through it to figure out what are the things that I latch on to and research more. I mean, that would be I imagine super overwhelming for most people.

SPEAKER_00 26:02

And it was for me as well. I just have to be incredibly lucky that I had the right skill set for it. I mean, my entire job was based around, well, not just, you know, as I mentioned, the legal language side, it was looking at laws, it was interpreting them, which when it came to medical jargon was fantastically useful because it's a similar sort of focus, a similar sort of way of writing. Yeah, the terminology is different, but as soon as you get your head around the terminology, it's it's quite easy. For me, not for everyone, I well understand. And then the other side is because I did large investigations, you know, I've investigated presidents and prime ministers and statesmen all over the world as part of my job, looking for financial criminals, looking for fraudsters, terrorists, all these sorts of things within banking data and finance data. Yeah, I'm used to dealing with these huge, huge data sets and trying to find those needles in a haystack. So I just happened to be the right person at the right time in the right place, and at the right time in history as well, as well, right, with the advent of things like AI, I was able to create my own language learning model, isolate it from the internet and everything else, and feed it just on the papers that I wanted it to see, and use that as sort of a sense check. I've never used it as my primary by any means. I have a team for that, but we used it as a sense check to look for interactions, to ask questions, to to pick out anomalies in data and patterns that that humans wouldn't normally pick up or look at. Now, of course, it fantasizes, it hallucinates, it creates things that aren't really there, which is why it has to come back to the human being. But it also gave us some incredible insights that that we wouldn't have had without it. And it let me make marginal gains of little percentages here and there by combining things in ways that that weren't in the papers, that weren't in the research, that nobody would naturally know to do. And it gave me that little edge that has that has allowed me to be here, that has given me an ability to survive. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:56

Oh my gosh. Dale, as you're you're sharing, it's it's so interesting how um you've seen this common theme of the fear that's kind of hung over the patient's um head, right? In terms of you know, going down one path in terms of practice. But you've taken the opportunity to look at um medications that are actually introduced and working in different ways that impact the body in different ways and incorporating that to, as you nicely said, create this um uh like the woven um what are the blankets? Yeah, quilt, yes, the quilted tapestry. Exactly. Yes. And so um I think that's a huge piece. And but when I when I think about medical practitioners, and I've I'm not a trained medical practitioner, I've never gone to medical school, but you know, when you have a conversation with your doctor, if you were to tell them, you know, well, I'm just gonna pray about this, or I'll meditate about this, or I'll go and have a healing session on this, there's never any pushback or argument in that space. The moment you say, I'm gonna go, I'd like to explore the homeopathic route of um treatment, and then it's like red flag, don't do that, or I'm out of here. Right? Like I keep coming back to this piece of like, why such a stark push and wall that's built up when there's clearly synergy that exists because you yourself have been able to identify it and many others have been able to identify it, but I don't think that it's um it's readily accessible to the average patient. Because as Pam said, you have the diagnosis now and your prognosis of what you're doing. You're trying to probably figure out what you want to do, how you're going to pay for it, and just the emotional burden of it all. And now you've got to go down this path of like researching, and not everyone's built for that.

SPEAKER_00 29:41

No, not at all in any way, shape, or form. And it's an impossible task for it was an impossible task for me. It's an impossible task for most people. But very thankfully, there are quite a few resources out there now that are hoping to stitch some of that together. Uh, there are centers all over the US, all over the UK, and various other places that that help with this. There are also charities like uh Yes to Life in the UK. I don't know what the US version is. Um myself and Jane McClelland are also in the process of starting our own charity to do some of this as well. Um it's called Beyond the Standard. It is currently awaiting UK Charities Commission sign-off. Um and the charity will be initially looking at the UK, but with the hope to spread that out to the US as well. And the focus will be on pushing for systemic change within the healthcare system, um, pushing and lobbying at a governmental level. We are looking to stitch together information from as many clinics, as many sources, and as many places as we can in order to provide sort of an irrefutable body of evidence that these work because we know they do. Jane's story is that of a stage four pro uh stage four, I think she was ovarian cancer and uh lymphoma as well. She's had two or three stage four cancers and she has survived using this route. I have now survived using this route. We have various other people who are surviving or have survived cancer helping and assisting and in part of this as well. Um, and we are hoping to use that to really influence change as much as we can. And that's also the reason I come onto podcasts and whatever else. I I'm not a natural sharer, I'm not somebody who enjoys talking about myself. It's not not something that comes obviously or naturally or or easily to me. But I do this in order to try and get the word out about these things because the more people who hear things like this, the more people who reach out, the more people who understand, the more people who do their own research, then the more people there is as part of this movement. And that's important.

SPEAKER_03 31:40

Well, and and you give people hope, which I think is one of the most powerful uh uh parts of the.

SPEAKER_00 31:48

And I think the one single thing that I've also noticed across my journey, um, and speaking to as many patients as I do, is that mindset and hope is probably the single biggest influencing factor on outcomes. If you can keep yourself positive moving forward, no matter what, you know, excuse my language, but on the crappest of days, if you can get yourself out of bed, go downstairs, have a cup of coffee, and you know, even go for a short walk or whatever else, even in the midst of chemotherapy, feeling like absolute death, if you can have the motivation and the mindset to do that, you can find a way to get through this thing. Now, I can't say that's a medical statement in any way, shape, or form. It is from the amount of people I've spoken to.

SPEAKER_02 32:33

Disclaimer, none of us are medical professionals, and so we're not giving you medical advice. There we go. There's our act.

New Business Built To Help Patients

SPEAKER_03 32:38

Yeah, at least putting one foot in front of the other to just to keep moving. And I mean, you have have had littles, or still they're still little, but they're still little, yeah. You have little, and and that's one of those things that they're always mostly always joyful, and they they bring that that hope and they they give you that motivation to like, nope, I'm not, yeah, I'm not gonna take that answer.

SPEAKER_00 33:04

They do, and they have been my driving motivation through all of this, through the charity, through the work I do, through the spreading my word through all of it, including the purchase of the business we made recently. You know, not many stage four cancer patients decide to actively go out and buy a business and and try to fix a an ailing business. But I needed to show my little boys that their daddy doesn't ever give up, that their daddy will find a way forward, and that their daddy is looking to be here for the long term. Therefore, I needed to do something that showed not just them but myself that there is a future for me, that there is something waiting on the other side of this, especially because I can't go back to my career anymore. Um, not least because we found that stress was a big driver in my specific cancer. Cortisol, uh, adrenaline and noradrenaline um were huge drivers, and what I did for a living was extremely stressful. So I can't go back to it, so I had to find a new way forward. So we bought a business. We are working heavily on the business to integrate my story into it as part of it, and we are essentially curating a set of modalities and a set of therapies within the business itself. And I should mention self-promotion, uh, that the business is called peakhealth and fitness uh.co.uk. Um, and essentially we sell everything from red light therapy panels to ice baths to saunas. It's essentially everything I use along my journey. We are trying to find the best quality, the best customer service as well, um, is really important for us because if we're trying to sell this to patients, when you're vulnerable, when you're feeling at your worst and something breaks, the last thing you want is some hassle of a person on the phone going, Well, it's not our problem, you know, but the warranty's void. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 34:51

Yeah, the warranty's expired, nothing we can do about it. You can order another one, there's 10% off.

SPEAKER_03 34:55

Even get to talk to a person, which is yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 34:58

Exactly. So we are trying to change all of that. We're trying to not be the nameless corporation online like Amazon, like all these companies who will happily sell you something can never back up the sale behind it. We want to do the opposite, and we are curating a very high-quality set of suppliers who have the same sort of ethos as us. And we're talking companies like Javia, the big uh sauna company. There's a company called Monk who do ice bars who are fantastic. There's Wave Spars who are an alternative to lazy spas and all these kind of companies who have customer service as their forefront because we want people who are in vulnerable positions to feel that safety, to know that if something goes wrong, they are supported, that they can pick up this phone and speak to me or one of the other members of the team, and that we will go out of our way to help them, not just go, I'm sorry, that's not our problem, you know, warranty's finished, that's it. We want to do the opposite. And I want to show my little boys that despite everything we've been through, you can still build something beautiful that helps people. And because of the experience we've had, you know, what else would we do? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:07

Oh, I love that. I love that. Dale, can you share with our listeners how they can get a hold of you or if they want to connect with you? Clearly, don't send a direct message on LinkedIn. You can still catch up. I'll do that.

SPEAKER_01 36:19

You can't, you can.

SPEAKER_00 36:20

I just might not have to do that.

SPEAKER_03 36:21

I've got two thousand to go through. Yeah, I'm not sure.

Final Advice On Time And Mindset

SPEAKER_00 36:24

So, very thank you on the LinkedIn side. I've actually ended up having to employ a team to help me. Oh, perfect. I I have a team who now work on my LinkedIn. So everything that goes out of my LinkedIn, the messages and everything else is all me. Uh, it's just they pick up because I get a lot of sales messages. I also get a lot of unfortunately hate mail and stuff through. They pick up and and screen everything for me and pick up what's important for me to deal with, sort of thing. Um, so yes, if you do want to find me on LinkedIn, I'm Dale J Atkinson. You should find me quite easily on there. Uh alternatively, I also have a blog where I write about my journey. I write about research that I'm doing, about general bits and pieces I think will help excuse me, will help people and and influence them on their journey. Uh, and that's called thelifeorganic.com. Um, and then the business is peakhealthandfitness.co.uk. Um, or alternatively, you can find me on Facebook. I think I'm I've got an Instagram somewhere as well that comes through. Just type my name into Google and you'll probably find something.

SPEAKER_02 37:22

You're so I love it. I love it. So if you had any final words for our listeners, um, if they're individuals that have they themselves have recently received a diagnosis, they're the caregiver for someone that's recently received a diagnosis, or it's just they want to know how they can be advocates for themselves if they ever find themselves in that position. What advice would you give our listeners today?

SPEAKER_00 37:46

So I think there's two things I would probably say. First of all, is never be pushed into making a decision you're not comfortable with. There are so many times in all of this, especially with things like chemotherapy, where they will ask you to make a decision right now. If you are not in a position where you understand what the ramifications are or what you are saying yes to, ask for a few days. With things like chemotherapy, honestly, in 99.9% of cases, there is going to be no harm to you whatsoever by waiting an extra week or two or four in most cases. And actually, the mindset of going into that when you do fully understand that you are aware of the side effects, that you have a plan of action, will do you far better than saying yes on the spot. So my first one is take your time. And the second one is there is never so much on your plate that you can't take five minutes. For me, that five minutes is to sit down and I do a lot of breathwork exercises. I'm a big fan of Wim Hof breathing. Um, I'm also a big fan of spending five minutes with my little boys, and quite often I will cut phone calls and whatever else, slightly early, if I know I have another one coming up, to go and just spend five minutes on the floor being silly and hugging them. And I would say no matter what is going on in your life, take time for that five minutes because it replenishes the soul, it makes you feel better and everything feels brighter afterwards. And to keep your mindset in the right place, those five minutes can make all the difference. And as we've already said, mindset is the biggest thing in all of this. So the more you can focus on that, the more you can give to yourself, the better your overall survival chances are. And I think that's that generally works in all of life as well.

SPEAKER_02 39:30

Exactly, just in general. Thank you, Dale. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you for sharing your story. I know that you said that this is not your norm in terms of sharing your personal story and going out and speaking about these types of things, but here you are. Fabulous storyteller. Um, so continue the great work. I love the passion, conviction that you have to basically empower other people that are are finding themselves in a space where they may feel powerless, um, lost, confused. Um, just giving that guidance, direction, support. Uh, greatly appreciated. I know that you're going to expand to the US here soon with the company and the services and the products. So we will keep our eyes and ears open and we're happy to support you however we can. But thank you so much for joining us today.

SPEAKER_00 40:13

Thank you so much. Thank you. And thank you so much for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure.

SPEAKER_02 40:18

Same. Oh my goodness. We will make sure that we put all of Dale's contact information in the show notes, LinkedIn profile included, so you can send him messages there. Um, and if you all want to catch up with what's happening in the world of Regnite Resilience, head on over to RegniteResilience.com or find us on Facebook and Instagram and YouTube. Until next time, we will see y'all soon.

SPEAKER_05 40:49

Thank you for joining us today on the Reagnight Resilience podcast. We hope you had some aha moments and learned a few new real life ideas to fuel the flames of passion. Please subscribe on your favorite streaming platform, like or download your favorite episodes, and of course, share with your friends and family. We look forward to seeing you again next time on Read Knight Resilience.