Stop Waiting for Doctors to “Fix You”: The Missing Message About Food, Cancer, and Real Prevention

Most people believe modern medicine will save them if something goes wrong. But according to Dr. Joel Fuhrman, that belief may be the biggest risk factor of all.

In a powerful episode of the Plant-Based Support Podcast, lifestyle medicine physician Dr. Niki Davis sits down with Dr. Fuhrman—board-certified family physician and nutrition expert—to uncover what the public is not being told about disease prevention, cancer risk, and the limits of conventional medical care.

Dr. Fuhrman’s message is clear: medicine treats symptoms, but nutrition determines outcomes.

He explains that while drugs and procedures may sometimes be necessary, they often come with serious risks and rarely address the root cause of chronic disease. “People are taught to believe doctors will fix them,” he says, “but the truth is, lifestyle choices created the disease in the first place.”

One of the most overlooked truths? Precision nutrition matters more than labels.

While “whole-food, plant-based” is a strong foundation, Dr. Fuhrman argues it’s not specific enough. The real protection comes from nutrient density and diversity—foods like mushrooms, cruciferous vegetables, seeds, legumes, and berries that work together to support immune surveillance, suppress harmful gene expression, and reduce cancer risk.

Mushrooms, for example, contain compounds that block angiogenesis (the blood supply tumors need to grow) and help stabilize cells against damage. Seeds like flax, chia, and sesame provide lignans that balance hormones and protect breast and prostate tissue. Soy foods support bone and muscle health without overstimulating estrogen-sensitive tissue.

The takeaway isn’t fear—it’s empowerment.

When we stop outsourcing our health to the medical system and start fueling our bodies with the right foods, we give ourselves the best chance at avoiding cancer, heart disease, dementia, and more.

As this conversation makes clear: food isn’t just fuel—it’s medicine.

👉 Learn more and explore upcoming events at plantbasedsupport.org

Episode’s Transcript

Please understand that a transcription service provided the transcript below. It undoubtedly contains errors that invariably take place in voice transcriptions.

Niki Davis, MD (00:11.433)

All All right. Hello, I'm Dr. Nikki Davis, and this is the Plant-Based Support Podcast, where we share evidence-based wisdom, real stories, and support for your journey to better health through plant-based living. Now, I myself worked as an engineer on the Space Shuttle program before changing my own health and career when I moved to a plant-based diet. And now as a lifestyle medicine physician, I help patients all over the world at LifestyleTelemedicine.com.

Now in today's episode, I am so excited that we will be chatting with Dr. Joel Furman, a board certified family physician and an expert on nutrition and natural healing. But first, we're gonna do our quick doctor insight where we are going to talk about a topic that I think is near and dear to Dr. Furman's heart. I just wanna talk briefly about the health benefits of mushrooms and why you might want to include those in your diet.

They provide unique phytochemicals such as beta-glucans and ergothionein that strengthen immune function, reduce inflammation, and may actually lower the risk of cancer by inhibiting angiogenesis, which by the way is growth of blood vessels that feed tumors. Now, mushrooms also have compounds not found in most other foods because they're a fungi, making them a valuable daily addition for disease prevention. All right, well, I am so excited to introduce you all

to Dr. Joel Furman. Thank you, Dr. Furman, for joining us today on the Plant-Based Support Podcast.

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. (02:02.317)

My pleasure, looking forward to it.

Niki Davis, MD (02:05.072)

All right, well, you I didn't really introduce you very much. I didn't really say much about you because I would really love it if you could tell us about you and kind of what brought you to where you are today. How did you get into this world of nutrition and health? Where did it all start?

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. (02:26.521)

Well, believe it or not, it started in my childhood. I think a lot of people started with their family members getting sick and recovering. Well, it kind of started that way. My father was overweight and sickly and had various medical conditions. And he started reading books mostly by Herbert Shelton. The first book he read was You Don't Have to Be Sick by Jack Duntrop, who was a TV producer. And then he read all of Shelton's works. And we got involved with the American Natural Hygiene Society.

early in the 1960s when I was still a kid. But in any case, did develop, first when I was young I thought, wow, this is crazy. How can all these people think like this? And does that mean everybody in the medicine and everybody is wrong in the whole world except these people? They're trying to call out that drugs are not the answer, the medical profession. So I first was very skeptical.

But as I was more more exposed in my teenage years to people adopting these aggressive lifestyle changes, which was really a form of a whole food plant-based diet where people were eating, you know, just fruit, healthy, mostly raw fruits and vegetables, and utilizing fasting too, and watching people recover from asthma and psoriasis and reversing diabetes. So I was seeing that in my teenage years actually before I even...

And at that point, was on the world, I was competing as a figure skater. I was a competitive figure skater. We were in 1973, I was second in the United States in pairs figure skating with my sister. So that means we spent years of training and inside a skating rink of skating six hours a day and running around with weights, with books on our back and sprinting up. was in training all the time.

running around, hardly ever going to, missing school, traveling to compete, training, going to coaches, and so my life was really revolved as a competitive figure skater. And then I think that because during college, my still primary interest during college was my skating career and being on the Olympic team. It wasn't about the courses I was taking in college. They were just a side element.

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. (04:51.171)

almost all my contemporaries in ice skating weren't going to school. I was the only one probably in the top, you know, top 10 in the world who were actually going to school and not training full time, you know. So, and in those days you couldn't take any money as an amateur wanting to compete in world and professional Olympic events. had to be poor, essentially. But in any case, by that point in my life, I was already eating very healthily and seeing that it gave us an edge. We had an edge in stamina.

because we took and that was what you stamina was everything whether you're a boxer or a tennis player a skater Whatever you're doing, know, you you know how you can all be good avoiding punches when you're fresh But it's when you tire out that you're you know, it's the same thing with tennis You're good in the match until you start to tire out and you make stupid mistakes You know, I mean the same thing with skating the mistakes all happen because you fatigued but in any case So I Obviously had to quit skating. I had I had an injury. I was on crutches for almost a year

Niki Davis, MD (05:38.542)

Yeah.

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. (05:50.861)

I lost my opportunity to represent the United States. I was ranked number two in the country and the number one team had retired, so I was number one in line for the title when I got hurt and couldn't skate anymore. I pushed my heel bone through the bottom of my foot so I couldn't skate or compete for a long time. But in any case, that changed maybe my career and then I...

Niki Davis, MD (06:10.912)

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. (06:19.377)

eventually realized you can't be so old getting back into things and living off your parents' money as a competitive athlete in those days. I had to make a living so I started becoming professional and I also then eventually took over my family's shoe business. My father had a chain of 12 shoe stores in the New York metropolitan area. My passion for nutrition and what nutrition can do was unsatisfied. After a few years of working in the real world,

I realized that I think that I would prefer to go back to school again and be a doctor specializing in nutrition. I thought about it. I started to think I should take a biology course at night. And then I started dating a woman who eventually is my wife, Lisa. And she was applying to medical schools at that point. And I said to her, and we were having these talks and saying, well, why are you bothered going to medical school anyway? Because what doctors do is mostly worthless.

I mean, they're giving people drugs, which we know are poisons, to really lessen the symptoms of diseases that they earn with their knife and fork. I mean, you know, it's much better if you just advise people, you know, and most of what medical doctors do maybe isn't even worthless. Maybe it's even worse than worthless because maybe it's actually harmful because they reinforce the fact that instead of... So we've had this conversation and Lisa said, why don't you go to medical school and change things? And this is back in the 1970s.

around 1976 or something, but in any case, or I said I would love to do that, but I can't because I graduated from college and I'm into a career and I don't have any of pre-medical requirements. So at that point I was made aware, know, who Lisa knew about the, you know, and so at that point I decided, okay, so my wife really encouraged my, she wasn't even my wife then, we were just dating, you what I mean? But in any case,

Niki Davis, MD (08:12.844)

Yeah.

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. (08:15.043)

That really made me think, I could do this. So I told my father that I was going to leave the shoe business. You could sell it off. This is before I went back to the postgraduate pre-med program at Columbia and took the pre-medical requirements. I realized I can do that in one year. I can cram them all into one year and then apply to medical school. And Lisa was already applying to medical school before I went to Columbia. she was a year ahead of me in medical school, actually. So she started medical school a year ahead of me.

And so I knew I had to get into a medical school close to her, like preferably an Ivy League medical school, wanted to be a different type of doctor. So I had to do well in college because my father sold the business. wasn't, I wasn't having, didn't have something that I could fall back on. I knew I better do good in the courses in MCAT. So I had to devote myself like I did to skating. You had to be real intense and make sure you did well. And I got, and so I went to Penn because she was at UMDNJ. She was at medical school where she was.

Niki Davis, MD (08:57.335)

Right?

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. (09:11.471)

two years in Newark and two years in Camden. And I knew if I went to Penn, then I could be, she would be switched to Camden. So the first year she would be in medical school. We'd only be apart that one year, you know, and then we'd go on weekends. And then after that, she'd be both down in the Philly area for me, for my medical training. So that's essentially.

Niki Davis, MD (09:27.396)

Yeah. Well, okay. So that, so that is incredible. And I know that you and I have kind of talked about this before, but our stories are so similar in that, you know, I didn't work in the shoe business, but I was an engineer in a previous life. And I, just like you has, have been interested in nutrition and health pretty much my entire life stopped, you know, started removing animal foods from my diet as a teenager. So I just kind of intrinsically knew

that eating a hamburger was not as healthy as eating carrots, right? But it was interesting because I kind of went through that same time in my life where I thought, I really want this to be a bigger part of my life. I don't want to be an engineer anymore. I'm too passionate about health and nutrition. And I was talking to my husband at the time and talking about what could I do? And he was working as a physician contract.

basically helping write physician contracts. And he said, well, you if you went to medical school, you could really make a difference and help people with nutrition because people will listen to you. So it's actually his idea. And I looked into it and had to go back and do all the prerequisites and all of that. But yeah, specifically went back to do medical school so that I could do the kind of medicine I'm doing today, just like you.

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. (10:50.789)

That's cool. I know we have a lot in common. And also you're a good athlete too.

Niki Davis, MD (10:56.706)

Yeah, yep, we both like to do our skiing and snowboarding, don't we?

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. (11:04.217)

Yeah.

Niki Davis, MD (11:07.754)

All right, so okay, so then you got into medical school.

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. (11:08.191)

So from that experience in medical school, yeah, I don't know what your experience is like in medical school, but I enjoyed medical school. I felt that learning the sciences not only didn't contradict what I was had.

wanted to do but it actually supported. The things you learn in medical school support lifestyle medicine and disagree with conventional medicine. They tell you in medical school, you know, the first things that drugs are toxic and it's much better if people didn't, you have to use these things and they talk about how the poisonous effects and all the side effects and all the dangers of conventional treatments and the dangers, you know, we're learning all the dangers of treatments and we're saying, well, why? What if people could stay well? And then most of my professors and teachers in medical school said, yeah, we would have these conversations.

in meetings, they'd always say, yeah, we know you're right, but the problem is getting people to listen to you. That's the problem. I said, well, that's an art and a skill, and that you're not teaching people adequately. The training here isn't adequately teaching people this art and skill of motivating behavioral change. So I had all these conversations in medical school. I influenced my medical school class and even some of the professors I developed long-term relationship with. So I enjoyed the time there.

Niki Davis, MD (12:13.941)

Absolutely.

Niki Davis, MD (12:25.676)

Yeah, no, I agree with you. I also enjoyed it. And it was nice to have that kind of outside lens of knowing that you want to do what we now call lifestyle medicine and realizing that during your training, that that's what your goal is eventually. So you're taking in all that information because it's important for us to be aware of what current medical recommendations are and how.

medical professionals are treating their patients so that we can help those patients who are seeing conventional medical, the conventional medical system and those providers and help them with the lifestyle medicine part of it.

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. (13:09.999)

Yeah, and I think if people really knew the true risks of medical care, many more would embrace lifestyle medicine. If they knew, for example, that...

diabetic medications, you know, the Accord study of course is well known that the group assigned to better, medical care to lower their glucose more favorably with medication was stopped. That study was stopped after eight years by the National Institute of Health because so many more people were dying in the aggressive in the medical group compared to the people letting their blood sugars run higher who weren't treated as well. It's not that letting your blood sugar be higher is better. It's that the drugs are so dangerous because when you have people that are insulin resistant and their insulin isn't able to

function normally, you want to give them more insulin, you're then increasing their appetite, making them gain weight, or giving them drugs that push the beta cells in the pancreas to produce more insulin, then causes the beta cells to poop out further. It accelerates the rate at which they develop more advanced diabetes. So the drugs make things worse, not better. When you go through the risks of almost everything doctors do, you find that in overall, they're in many cases what they do causes net harm.

because the more people are harmed versus helped, even though, know, but in any case, the bottom line is it's more armamentarium to say, people, look, you really want to avoid getting into the medical care system as much as you can.

know, live and take charge of your own health on your own and not resort to doctors thinking doctors are going to fix you. know, so it's the same thing with mammograms, know, exposing your breasts to radiation your whole life and then having them overdiagnose 30 % of the cases that are diagnosed with cancer and the number one type of cancer

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. (14:55.715)

that are diagnosed of course are invasive lobular and invasive ductal carcinomas which are what I'm saying right now is that the pathologist looking at the biopsy after the abnormal mammogram can't discern accurately which case is going to go on to metastasize and cause a problem and which case is going to sit there and be local and not grow and not cause a problem and when you start to give chemo

and radiation to people whose cancer was never going to kill them, then you increase the risk of death from other causes like heart attacks and secondary cancers due to the treatments they got. And so a lot of the Cochrane analysis and lot of the impartial analysis of putting women through this cycle, a lot of top researchers around the world go through the data and saying that the way we treat people in this country, even though it's drummed into people's heads, causes overall net harm. And whether it does or it doesn't,

Niki Davis, MD (15:32.969)

Yeah.

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. (15:53.887)

it's close, whether mammograms might help a little bit or whether they hurt a little bit, it's still close, but the bottom line is it de-emphasizes what women could have done to protect breast cancer in the first place. Instead of the focus being on these factors that we're knowing that prevent cancer, it's all focused on the screening and the treatments. And it's just, it's focused on the wrong syllable and then women are screwed because of it. But in any case, the precision nutrition that we're talking about is not just

whole food plant-based. It says you brought up this idea of mushrooms. It's the fact that we know so much about developing a dietary portfolio that we know can afford people the opportunity not to get cancer when they get this right.

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. (16:41.202)

I think you dropped off.

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. (20:18.797)

I still can't hear you.

Niki Davis, MD (20:53.745)

Okay.

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. (20:55.512)

there you are.

Niki Davis, MD (20:56.498)

There we go. I'm so sorry. I'm not sure why that was not working for a moment. I changed to a different wifi. So hopefully if that was the problem. Okay. So if we can kind of go back to where we lost me, think it was, we had just finished talking about mammograms and then you were talking about the diet.

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. (21:18.629)

Right, think we're about, when we watched you, we about at 16, 17 minutes, so I think about 15 minutes in, you can search back and make a place to cut this into that first 15 minutes.

Niki Davis, MD (21:30.513)

Perfect.

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. (21:35.245)

Should I go back to, so I'll say the, ready to get started? Okay.

Niki Davis, MD (21:39.184)

Yep, go ahead.

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. (21:42.583)

So of course, the issue really isn't that important. Whether a person has a mammogram or not isn't the big issue. Of course, I'm preferring people use non-radiation exposure to evaluate breasts if they choose that route. Nevertheless, the emphasis here is that nutrition or science has made such radical advances. We can develop a diet with precision to give people...

the foods and the nutrients they need to radically reduce the risk of cancer. And this is what the message the population is not getting that we talked about earlier today. You mentioned mushrooms, the anti-angiogenic effects, the fact that they have anti-aromatase effects to block estrogen stimulation of breast and prostate tissue, the fact that they can tear ergothionine, which stabilizes the cells from damage, and the fact that's just one example, but we're talking here about...

the precision nutrition to design a diet with all these various elements that work synergistically to maximize the immune system's ability to seek out abnormal cells and remove them and to prevent cells from becoming abnormal to begin with and to suppress genetic alterations that could lead to cancer. So we're talking about three things I just mentioned. One is gene silencing, that is with optimum nutrition and with high density, with high concentration of antioxidants and phytochemicals in cellular tissue, it suppresses genetic

alterations that could cause damage. That's called gene suppression. The next thing is, you know, immune surveillance, right? The ability of the body to search the body for anything abnormal and take out those cells that could cause damage and you need a healthy functioning immune system to do that. So we're saying that the body has innately already designed in its...

and its beautiful miraculous design, the ability to prevent cancer only if it's well fed with these particular nutrients that arm these immune, these defensive mechanisms. And that's why we're putting together raw cruciferous vegetables with scallions or onions and eating mushrooms and using flax seeds or chia seeds or sesame seeds, which are the three seeds with the highest amount of lignans, which then also have anti-astrogenic effects and have anti-aromatase effects.

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. (23:55.377)

But in any case, and that's why we're using soybeans because soybeans are a unique food and other beans are very powerful in their amount of inositol, pentachysphosphate, and these nutrients that actively enable the body to remove abnormal cells and to prevent cancer cell replication. But in any case, we talked about soybeans because the isoflavones block

the E1 receptors on breast tissue, so they're not gonna be overstimulated in prostate tissue, yet they fit into the E2 receptors on the muscle and bones, particularly helping women support bone mass and muscle strength with aging without stimulating breast tissue. So the whole food plant-based diet.

is the ideal way of eating to defend the population against the increased cancer epidemic that's ravaging America. But I'm objecting to people using the term whole food plant-based. Not objecting per se, but saying we have to be more precise in explaining what people should be eating. And the words whole food plant-based don't adequately describe it. I want people to be inclusionary of all the various elements and the wide

diversity of substances that will maximize the immune system to really give them protection against cancer and not just be eat a diet of all fruit or all potatoes or all rice like a macrobotic diet or you know to actually actually eat your all these different foods you could be eating to maximize immune function because diversity and exposure to these various nutrients improves the quality of a person's diet.

Niki Davis, MD (25:32.239)

Absolutely. And if someone would be interested in learning what types of foods you recommend that they have, would they just go to your website? Is that available online?

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. (25:45.829)

Oh yeah, yes, my website is drferman.com and I have all types of learning information, videos, things to read and I have my Eat to Live podcast, I have fun with my daughters, we do that which goes into various aspects. We used to do it monthly, now we're it up to weekly. So yeah, there's lots of ways people can learn more and get the details including, you know, the...

Achilles heel, the weaknesses of a vegan diet and what to do to make sure your vegan diet doesn't result in any particular issues. How to be smart with your... For example, I'm talking about sometimes, I want to bring up the fact that I'm going to be in Detroit speaking live for a whole evening in Detroit on Thursday, October 9th. I think it's I'm doing...

a hours, like three or four hours, including questions and answers in a few different lectures. So I'm doing a whole night in Detroit in the plant-based support group. So that's really exciting. I've been traveling around the country and doing events.

Niki Davis, MD (26:49.934)

Yeah, that's exciting because, yeah, and that's especially exciting because, know, with 2020 and COVID, a lot of the plant-based, what was the plant-based nutrition support group, which is now plant-based support, at that time, they really had to go just virtual for everything. And so now we're starting to reincorporate some of these in-person events. And so that's what we're talking about is this amazing event that's coming up in Detroit, October 9th. You will be there.

I think you've got a couple of lectures and a Q &A session. So yeah, please, if you're interested in joining, if you're near Detroit, it will be absolutely an amazing night. And just go to plantbasedsupport.org to find out more information on that. Yeah, I wish I were close by. Okay, well, great. So I know that's true.

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. (27:39.845)

You're a plane flying away. you know, it's funny because you live in Salt Lake City, right? You're living in Salt Lake City.

Niki Davis, MD (27:46.006)

Yeah, yep. So when you come skiing, you're gonna, you're gonna call me, right? Yep.

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. (27:47.811)

And I fly out to Salt Lake City like every couple of weeks. Right, we're gonna ski, because I go out to Salt Lake City like probably every two or three weeks just to go skiing in the wintertime.

Niki Davis, MD (27:57.142)

Yep, yep. remind me, is it solitude that is where you prefer to go?

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. (28:05.891)

Yes, I prefer to ski solitude. We can give them a plug. they have the bumps and they don't cat everything smooth, know, like all the smooth, cats everything. You can still get bumps and go and patrick a powder in the trees. And people who like the what's it called, the cat and groom slopes can ski. They have that too next to you. They don't groom the whole slope. They just groom one section. So us, people like the bumps in the powder and the crud can keep skiing and that stuff.

Niki Davis, MD (28:07.672)

Yeah, yep.

Niki Davis, MD (28:25.517)

Like the groomed, yeah.

Niki Davis, MD (28:35.467)

Yeah, exactly. All right, well, so why don't you just tell us kind of, you you mentioned your website, Dr. Con, or sorry, Dr. Furman, let's edit that out. So drfurman.com is your website and any social media or any other places that people can go to learn more about you or what you do.

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. (29:00.473)

Well, I think they can watch my podcast, the Eat to Live podcast, which is good thing to do. I'm sure my daughters are putting me on Instagram and stuff like that. But I think they can find the stuff on the website. They can even go to the tab on the website that says resources, and it has blogs and podcasts and things you can learn and position papers. So there's all kinds of ways that people can learn. And it's always great to be live.

for people live in Detroit to be able to be there and give you the most modern scientific research of the last two years that is elevating our advice to a new level of efficacy to make sure people are fully protected against cancer and don't get strokes, dementia, Parkinson's disease that can still occur in vegans. it's really, so much science that's come out in 2025 in a year that has elevated.

how we can teach people this information with authority and confidence.

Niki Davis, MD (30:02.093)

Great. All right. Well, thank you so much to everyone who's been listening or watching. We would love for you to join our growing community at plantbasedsupport.org and attend one of our in-person events like the one that Dr. Fuhrman will be at in October, or we have so many virtual events happening pretty much every day. And if you loved our show, please help us grow at plantbasedsupport.org. Every donation helps us support more people like you on their journey to health.

Now, in addition to our website, you can also find us on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn. Please subscribe, like, comment, leave a review. Thank you again, Dr. Furman, for being with us today. Until next time, I'm Dr. Nikki Davis with the Planet Based Support Podcast.

Niki Davis, MD (30:49.352)

All right, I'm going to stop recording.