Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D.

It's a major stress on all cells.

It's a death signal.

It's why it does effectively kill cancer cells is because they already have so much of that pro-death signal there.

There's just a little bit of the anti-hepatotic signal, and they're just waiting to raise above it.

And so that's what those things do, chemo and so on.

So unfortunately, they also kill normal cells as well because it's a very strong death signal.

When it comes to the circulating tumor cells, they're ready to die.

And I know I went on a tangent.

I'm sorry.

I studied cancer in my graduate school.

They have these mechanosensors on their cell surface.

And so they're very sensitive to mechanical forces and movement.

And that is something that can act as a death signal.

So if you think about the shearing forces, right, shearing forces of blood flow, that is friction against these cancer cells that, again, are responding in a way that it's a negative stress to them and they die.

And that's something that's been shown in vitro.

It's something that if you look at people that have circulating tumor cells, if they engage in physical activity, they're less likely to have cancer recurrence or cancer metastasize.

So the circulating tumor cells, why is it so dangerous to have them in circulation?

Well, for one, let's say you already had cancer and you were treated with cancer.

successfully, quote unquote, let's say you got chemo, radiation, maybe surgery, maybe all three of them, right?

And now you're tumor free, whatever.