I treated thousands of cancer patients and learned this

After 26 years and thousands of cancer patients, most of whom were told elsewhere that nothing more could be done, the lessons that actually changed outcomes are not the ones you hear on morning TV. This is the honest conversation I wish every patient had on day one of their diagnosis.

In this video, I walk through the biggest things I've learned about how cancer is actually treated, where the standard system falls short, and what patients and families can do about it. We cover why a diagnosis is not a treatment plan, what "standard of care" really means, and why the phrase "there is nothing more we can do" is usually a policy statement rather than a medical one. I explain why most tumors have never been properly tested at a genetic and molecular level, the root causes hiding in plain sight, and how the gut, nutrient deficiencies, and the overall state of the body shape how well any treatment works.

Then I shift to what you can actually do: when to get a second opinion (hint: much earlier than most people think), the exact questions to ask your oncologist, and why the caregiver is the second patient in the room. I close with the case that changed what I believed was possible, a late-stage patient who has been in remission for 25 years.

Whether you are facing cancer yourself, walking alongside someone who is, or simply trying to stay informed, this is meant to give you clarity and real options.

📍 Envita Medical Centers – Scottsdale, AZ
🌐 Learn more: www.envita.com
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“Prevention isn’t just about what you avoid — it’s about how you support your body.”

Disclaimer
This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your licensed healthcare provider before making any medical decisions. Individual results will vary, and Envita Medical Centers does not guarantee outcomes. Some treatments discussed may not be FDA-approved or available in all locations. Testimonials are shared with patient consent and may not reflect typical results. Do not delay or disregard professional medical care based on the podcast's content. Certain treatments may be available only at Envita’s international clinic in Hermosillo, Mexico. No specific outcomes are promised or implied.
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Outcomes Disclaimer
The results referenced from Envita's Precision Cancer Care: 35-Fold Improvement in Response Rates are from a retrospective analysis of 199 late-stage cancer patients treated at Envita Medical Centers between 2021 and 2023, as published in the Journal of Cancer Therapy. These outcomes are not guaranteed and will vary based on individual factors such as cancer type, stage, genetics, immunity and prior treatments. Any comparisons to standard care or clinical trials are based on published data and internal analysis, not head-to-head studies. Individual results will vary.

You can read the full peer-reviewed study at: 

https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation?paperid=132493

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

If you've got cancer, someone you love has it, or you're watching this disease take people too early and wondering what anyone is actually doing about it. This is the most 15 to 17 honest minutes I can give you. Because after 26 years of our team working with thousands of cancer patients who failed some of the top cancer hospitals across the country, this is what we've seen. The lessons that I'm about to share are not ones that you're going to hear on morning TV. They're not ones that are going to show up in a hospital pamphlet. They're the ones that we learned over many, many, many years the hard way by watching and actually improving and optimizing the care for each patient. And what actually worked, I'm going to walk you through the biggest lessons we've learned. And these things I wish every patient could understand on day one of their diagnosis. And every single one of them is something you can use, whether you're facing cancer yourself, standing next to somebody you love that has cancer, or you just want to stay one step ahead of the game. I'm Dr. Dino Prado, founder of NVITA Medical Centers. So before we get started, make sure you're working with a doctor before you change anything. Let's get started. The first lesson is this a diagnosis is not a treatment plan. And that sounds simple, but most people do not understand how important it is. A patient gets told you have stage three breast cancer or you have colon cancer or you have pancreatic cancer. And immediately they assume that the diagnosis and the treatment plans are basically the same thing. They think, okay, I know the type of cancer, so now the protocol must already be obvious. But that's not how it really works. Yes, there's national comprehensive cancer network guidelines that all major hospitals use for the same types and stages of cancer. But when you're doing precision oncology, you gain so much more data that helps you zero in on the treatment. So the diagnosis gives you the name of the disease, but it doesn't actually shape the treatment in great detail. It does not tell you the biology. It does not tell you the tumor microenvironment, the DNA, the RNA, the multi-omics, the immune spatial biology. It doesn't tell you the genetic behavior, the drivers, what caused the cancer, why your immune system is being escaped in finding the cancer. It doesn't tell you the metabolic weaknesses. It doesn't tell you why the tumor is behaving the way it is. Our team has seen this many times. In two patients that have the exact same type and stage of cancer have completely different markers. So the cancers can almost look identical on paper, but behave totally different in real life. One responds and the other one doesn't. One disease progresses faster and the other one doesn't. One has an actionable target that can be treated, and the other one has hidden immune barriers that no one else looked at until we did precision targeting. So the first thing I want everyone to understand is your diagnosis is the beginning of the questions. It is not the end of them. And if the diagnosis is not the plan, then how does the plan usually get chosen? That leads to lesson number two. The standard of care is the average. It is not the best. Now I want to be careful here. Standard of care has its place, it exists for a reason. It treats the masses, it has consistency, and it's helped patients, particularly in early stages of disease. It gives doctors framework. It protects against some of the chaos in medical care. But what most patients think standard of care means is this is the best medicine has to offer. That's not always true. Oftentimes that is not true. We find that over 90% of the patients we see were on the wrong chemotherapy. Very often, standard of care means this is the most acceptable, most reimbursable by insurance, most guidelines supported by big pharma and groups that brought it together options that works on the averages for the average patient. But cancer patients are never the average. That's the thing. The average medicine can fail extraordinary people. Averages hide the outliers, averages hide the markers, the targets of what this tumor and cancer needs to respond. It hides the immune system. So averages hide people who need deeper testing, deeper mapping, deeper personalization and precision, deeper immune analysis, and a more aggressive approach with targeted care that's more elegant. So one of the hardest things we've learned over the years is that many treatment plans that we see when patients come in are not chosen because they're the most brilliant biological strategies. They're chosen because they're the most available, the most defensible, the most insurable, and the most familiar inside a given system. And that's very different than the best targets that patients really need for care. And when the standard of care plans fail, and they do, and late-stage cancers, that can happen more often than you think, the patients get shocked. But I'm usually not shocked at this point. We've seen this for many decades now because we know often that the plan was built around policies and averages before it was built around your biology. And that brings me to lesson number three. There's nothing more we can do, is usually a policy statement, not a medical one. I've heard that sentence, and our medical team has heard that sentence for years, echoed through the mouths of patients who tell their stories after we've helped them, that that's what they heard, and then we help them. And I want to slow down here a little bit because this really matters. When a patient hears the sentence, they usually hear this my cancer is untreatable. There is truly nothing left. This is the end. But many times that's not the case. What the sentence really means is that the standard of care is done doing what they know. There is nothing more they can do within that hospital, that system, that protocol structure, that reimbursement model, and that toolbox that that doctor has in that standard model. That's not the same thing as what I'm talking about. It doesn't necessarily mean that there are no targeted options. It doesn't necessarily mean that there are no immune options. It doesn't necessarily mean there are no integrative precision approaches. It doesn't necessarily mean that there are no on-off label, integrative, targeted custom drug builds that can help you because that's what we find in the majority of our patients are missing. It doesn't mean any of those things. So it's so important for you to know that difference and not get lost or have somebody speak into your life that says, geez, there's nothing left that can be done. Yes, in the standard of care, but not in precision care, because we're looking at a thousand plus markers instead of the average 24. And we've watched patients that have come to us time and time again that basically thought the door was closed, and that when we do the testing and help them, it opens up the path. When someone says there's nothing more that can be done, do not assume that means there is nothing more anyone can do. Lesson number four your tumor has probably never actually been tested the way it should be. This is one of the most important lessons in the whole video. Most cancer treatment decisions are made with surprisingly incomplete information. You'd be blown away when I told you the information they're getting is very little. It shocks people, but it's just the truth. Patients get a biopsy, maybe 24 markers, a pathology report, some tumor markers if they're lucky, and some imaging. And there they get a national comprehensive cancer network. Maybe they'll get some limited genetics, DNA, and that's it. And then a treatment plan that kind of gets built on these things based on the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. But that's not the same thing that I'm talking about here, which is precision testing, real deep testing, looking at a thousand plus markers, deep molecular targeting, DNA next generation sequencing, RNA transcriptomics, immune profiling, understanding the tumor's microenvironment, what's caused the cancer, immune spatial biology, which means we're looking at the targetable weaknesses of the cancer, the resistant pathways, the immune suppression patterns, the metabolic clues, the inflammatory drivers, the signals that tell you not just what the tumor is called, but how it survives and more importantly, how to take it out. That's where true precision begins. So one of the biggest lessons I've learned, and I think our team has learned over these two and a half plus decades, is a lot of the patients are being treated for cancer based on the name of the disease, not on the deep mapping tumor biology. And here's the question every patient should ask their oncologist. What testing have you done? Have you done RNA transcriptnomics, DNA immune profiling, immune spatial biology? Because that's the critical piece. And then can you custom build the treatment for me? Can you go on off label, on label? Can you build immunotherapies to help me? And that's the key. That's the questions we want to be asking the doctors here. So even if when you get the answers to those questions and you have the right targets, the next question you need to ask is why is my body allowing this to happen? What's wrong with my terrain, my immune system? And this brings us to lesson number five. Root causes are usually hiding in plain sight. Cancer is not just a lump of cells, it's not just a scan, it's not just a pathology report. It's happening inside our cells at a deep level, terrain, immunity, genetics, RNA, DNA. Over two and a half decades, one of the biggest lessons we've learned is that the terrain matters. Immunity matters. Causation matters. What is the root cause? It matters far more than people are told. I'm talking about chronic inflammation, infections, chemical toxins, exposures to carcinogens, gut biome dysfunction, mold, immune exhaustion. I'm talking about metabolic chaos and problems with metabolic flexibility. I'm talking about toxins that have built up and nutrition depletion that's occurring. I'm talking about the biological stressors that help create the internal environment where cancers can thrive and grow and survive. Mainstream oncology really pretty much ignores this because it's not built to chase these questions. It's not designed to go after this. It's not because your doctor is bad, not because nobody cares, but because the system is fragmented. One doctor does the scan, another doctor gives the chemo, another doctor handles the surgery, another doctor maybe talks to you about radiation, but very often no one is talking about the bigger questions. What is helping this cancer live here? By addressing these underlying drivers and by getting precision targeting and getting to the root cause with detailed mapping, you change the game because now you know the soil that's feeding the cancer. You're able to know the pathways of the cancer. Whether you're doing conventional or integrative care, most people are not getting the testing and targeting they need. And one of the biggest parts is the terrain, your immune system, rebuilding your body, removing the causative agents, and getting the targeted care for your cancer. That's totally ignored. Which brings us to lesson number six: the importance of the things you need to do every day, even after you've treated the cancer to keep yourself healthy. Gut microbiome, immunity, removing toxic foods, taking the right things that help with the cellular energy at the mitochondrial level, and removing causative agents that have shaped the cancer, fixing the terrain and re-establishing the immune system, getting to the cause and eliminating the inflammation. This is key. Helping the body absorb the right minerals and nutrients it needs to stay strong and healthy. When you do these things, you're helping heart disease and aging all in one. That's why in this world we need to really understand not just how to treat the cancer, but how to long-term keep it at bay and help people return to glowing strong health by removing the deficiencies, restoring total health. Lesson number seven, deficiencies can drive outcomes as well. So, on top of doing all these treatments, if patients are deficient in nutrients, they have inflammation, they're exhausted, their muscles are weak, they're not resilient, we need to provide them nutrition, oftentimes intous or proper absorbable nutrition to get their body moving so that they can respond, recover faster, and do it after the half-life of the chemotherapy so that we're helping people return to health, get their protein correct, get their mitochondrial stress under control, and get their metabolic function working, mineral balance working, methylation working, detox pathways where they need it working, all to help with the cell membranes, all to help with inflammation, all to help with their health intelligently. This is not alternative medicine. This is evidence-based medicine. And when you combine these with the right targets, that's where you get to the next level. You're strengthening the patient at the root to help them be healthy and live longer and create a terrain where cancer can't grow, essentially, an immune system that's resilient. Targeted treatments matter, targeted care matters, but it has to be done all with precision because you need to know the biology of the cancer and the patient's body and the causative agents and work with all of that to build the right protocol and targeting. See, this conversation isn't happening in the hospital and standard oncology because they're stuck with protocols, machines, radiation, standard infusions. People try to do all these things on their own, but these actually need to be all done in concert for each patient. And that's the piece that's important. What's caused the cancer? Where's the malnourishment? Where's the immune system need targeting? How do we oxygenate the tissue? How do we detox the body? How do we help the body be resilient to fight the cancer and hold it into remission? We need to reframe the whole concept of cancer. You're not just receiving treatment, you're part of the treatment. Your body is part of the response and your terrain is the response, right? Your immune system needs to respond. You need to have the strength to respond. And that changes everything. That's what we're talking about is improving this. So you can change the situation for yourself or a loved one that has cancer because you have the right information and the right targeting that can make a difference. This brings me to another lesson. You should get a second opinion. That second opinion is not a diagnosis. All major hospitals typically do the same care in the standard of care, National Comprehensive Cancer Network. There's a huge difference when you get a precision oncology, second opinion, because at that point, now you're going to get all these markers, all these drivers, all these data sets. So you can go to the cancer and understand why it's adapting if you're not responding to care, or why your immune system isn't working the way it should, or why your body feels weak, how to recover it. You move your options from being narrow to being wide. And the more precise and the more information you're getting is far better. I'd rather treat a cancer with a thousand plus data points than just 24. And I mean it's that simple, or just a few hundred, because it gives us all the background and data so that we can dial everything in to help patients. And I believe that's the future of oncology, where patients have options, their body gets stronger, the disease is easier to treat. And it all starts with deep testing, multi-omics, and being able to custom build the medications on and off label at the right dose for the patient and deliver them directly to the tumor where they need to. So it's not necessarily going around the body, harming regular healthy tissue. See, this is all about precision. So getting a second opinion is not about being disloyal to your doctor. It's about being responsible. It's where your child or your spouse or your parent or your own life deserves that. You deserve to get a second opinion. I mean, you would if you're building a house or doing a repair around your house. It makes no sense not to do that in oncology. A second opinion done early is far better than done late, not as an act of fear, but as an act of wisdom. So you can see all the options and make the right decisions. And when a patient gets this second opinion, many still walk in with a problem. They don't know what to ask. And that's what I'm going to go into in this little part of the lesson. Most patients do not know how to ask their oncologist the right questions. I understand why. You're scared, you're overwhelmed, you don't know what to ask, and you don't have to make this difficult. And you don't want to be disrespectful to the doctor. But you are fighting for your life and you owe it to yourself to get the right answers and to ask these questions, like I've mentioned. Number one, what type of testing are you going to do? Are you going deep? Are you just going to look at tumor markers, biopsies, and imaging? Are you doing molecular profiling with RNA, DNA, immune profiling, and immune spatial biology? Number two, are you going to look at the root cause of what causes cancer? Chemicals, heavy metals, infections. Do you do any of that? Are you going to eliminate that? Are you going to strengthen my body? That's an important piece to ask. Are you going to build the right immunotherapy that I need? And then three, how are you going to monitor my response? Are you using adaptive monitoring so you can see changes before the tumor reoccurs? Are you using methylation scores, CTCs, circulating tumor cells, CT-free DNA? Because these are the right questions you need to ask your doctor. If your oncologist says, well, we don't do all that, we only do some of that, find one that does. Because the answers to those right questions is the difference between the latest technologies that can make the disease much more treatable and the quality of life far better than somebody who says, geez, we don't do that, because then you're kind of flying blind. And this is something you should be helping your family with. If you're helping somebody you love with cancer, these are the same questions you want to ask. Remember, two people with the same cancers will have different targets, and you need to absolutely target the cancer. Now, I want to come into this other very important part of the lesson: the caregivers. These are the family members, the children, your children that are trying to help you, or you might be helping your spouse or an aunt, an uncle, a family member, or a friend, somebody that's very close to you. Caregivers get exhausted and they need support too. They get emotionally overwhelmed and they need to keep their health up so they're able to help you. So caregivers can collapse. I've seen this. They can get exhausted with the logistics, the emotions, the spirituality of it all. So they need prayer and support. And they also need to eat healthy, do the right nutrition, get the right sleep, and get the right care for themselves. So their health gets better, their sleep is better, and they can support their loved ones that have cancer. See, this is really how we do it. Because if a caregiver is strong and healthy, they're going to be able to do wonderful things in providing support. I want you to learn this important lesson here. Late stage is not a death sentence. And it can prove to be when it's not treated correctly. But one of the earliest cases that shaped my life when we worked with this colon cancer patient was they were sent home to die, they had a very advanced cancer, multiple complexities. And she's alive 25 years later because of precision medicine that we were doing 20 years ago. Imagine how much more, year by year, month by month, two and a half decades later, we've improved. That's the lesson I want you to learn is that late stage cancer doesn't have to be a death sentence. And we treated it. We helped her go into remission, not for six months and a year, but for over two and a half decades. So that's powerful. That's why precision oncology is important. So late stage disease is not always the end of the story. It's about getting the right targets. That can help. What was missed, what needs to be done, how you help the patient, how you get everything organized for them so that you can move the patient in the right direction. That doesn't mean there's a promise of a miracle cure, but it means you're going to have a far better response rate and quality of life. That's the key to precision oncology. And over the years, as our team has seen thousands and thousands of patients in this particular area, we've seen people ask better questions, get deeper, better mapping, get answers to their questions, and they go from being the average to the precision, which has changed the entire game for them of their immune system, their body, their long-term health, and their quality of life. That's why precision oncology is so important for outcomes for people to live better. That's what over two and a half decades has taught me in leading this team of doctors, researchers, pharmacists, our whole entire team. It's taught me that not that cancer is simple, not that medicine has all the answers, not that every institution necessarily is wrong, but that too many patients are being handed a narrow map for a complicated war. And if there's one thing I want you to take from this video is this do not confuse the first answer with the full answer. Do not confuse the protocol with precision. Do not confuse we are out of options with there are no options. And do not give up just because somebody handed you the average plan for a very non-average disease. And if this video helped you, the next thing patients and families usually want to be clear on is what are the different types of cancers? How do they behave? Which ones are more aggressive, and why that matters for the treatment decisions. So click this video here and I'll walk you through step by step the different types of cancer so you can simply map it out and ask better questions moving forward with your help. I hope you found this video helpful and may the Lord bless you on your journey to healing.