Outperform Cancer

08/05/2026

As a metastatic breast cancer patient, I know one thing is certain: every failed treatment costs patients something they can never get back—time.

And as patients, we do not want to simply hope we have chosen the right treatment. We want the best evidence available to help us make one of the most important decisions of our lives.
Sometimes an oncologist has several reasonable options. They may all be considered standard of care. A clinical trial may also be available.

So how is the decision made?

Experience? Published response rates? Treatment guidelines? A patient’s prior history? Clinical judgment? All of those things matter—but they still may not tell us which treatment is most likely to work for the individual patient sitting in the room.

Population-based data can tell us how a treatment performed across hundreds or thousands of patients. What I want, as a patient, is more individualized data. I want to know how my cancer is likely to respond. I want information that helps quantify which treatment may be the strongest choice for me.

That is why I was so interested in speaking with Edward Chow, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer and Scientific Co-Founder of KYAN Technologies, for the newest episode of the Outperform Cancer podcast.

KYAN is developing a functional precision medicine platform that tests multiple drugs and drug combinations directly against a patient’s living cancer cells, then uses mathematical modeling to rank the options.

The technology is still evolving. It does not replace an oncologist, and it cannot eliminate every uncertainty. But it offers something patients desperately need: another source of individualized data to help reduce some of the trial and error in cancer treatment.

As cancer care becomes more advanced—and more complicated—I believe choosing the right treatment may become just as important as developing new ones.

Listen on your favorite podcast platform or...
🎥 Watch here on YouTube: https://youtu.be/KgOZygRPwjQ

When several treatments are reasonable, how do you decide which one to select?

07/09/2026

There is a kind of cancer knowledge that rarely makes it into a medical textbook. A metastatic patient once told Samira Daswani that when your hair falls out during treatment and your scalp becomes unbearably itchy, try a lint roller. Simple. Practical. Useful. And probably not something your oncologist or nurse is going to tell you.

That is the kind of wisdom patients and caregivers accumulate every day–what actually helps. What makes treatment a little easier. What you wish someone had told you sooner.

Sometimes that knowledge gets shared in a Facebook group, on Reddit, or between two patients who happen to find each other. But too often, it disappears.

In this short clip from my conversation with Samira Daswani, founder and CEO of Manta Cares, we talk about the importance of capturing and codifying this kind of lived experience.

Manta Cares brings together:
→ clinical guidelines
→ clinical expertise
→ patient experience

The goal is not to replace doctors. It is to make sure patients have access to the practical knowledge that can help them navigate cancer in the real world.

I think this matters enormously. Because some of the most useful things I have learned about living with cancer did not come from a medical journal. They came from other patients.

🎥 Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/72a3kOL1uoE

Listen to the Outperform Cancer podcast on your favorite podcast platform.

07/06/2026

You may have 15 minutes with your oncologist to make a decision that could shape the rest of your life. How do you make those 15 minutes count? Manta Cares can help.

You may be scared. Overwhelmed. Still trying to understand your diagnosis. A family member may be sitting beside you, desperately taking notes and trying to remember everything. And in that brief window, you may need to understand:
→ What are my treatment options?
→ What are the tradeoffs?
→ Are there tests I should ask about?
→ Is there another decision coming that I need to prepare for?
→ What matters most to me?

This is one of the enormous gaps in cancer care that Samira Daswani, founder and CEO of Manta Cares, is trying to solve. Because most of the work of being a cancer patient happens outside the oncology appointment.

Patients and care partners research. Track symptoms. Manage side effects. Think through priorities. Worry about what they may have forgotten to ask.

Then they walk into a high-stakes appointment and try to make the most of a few precious minutes.

Samira believes the activated patient is one of the most underutilized resources in our health care system. I agree. Patients and families should not have to become medical experts. But with the right tools, they can walk into appointments better prepared to:
→ Ask better questions
→ Communicate what matters to them
→ Understand the decisions in front of them
→ Participate more fully in their care

That is what Manta Cares is designed to help them do -- with live virtual support, an online navigation tool, and their specialized AI agent, Hope AI.

This one-minute clip gets to the heart of a much bigger conversation I had with Samira about the Activated Patient Advantage — and why helping patients participate more fully in their care may be one of the greatest opportunities to improve the cancer experience.

🎧 Listen to the full conversation on your favorite podcast platform today.
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/.../the.../id1710291164...
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3WRrBmJIxN0SOOHJioU2RR...

Visit www.outperformcancer.com

07/02/2026

Cancer care is complex.
Appointments are short.
Patients are overwhelmed.

But activated patients — patients who ask questions, communicate with their care team, and participate more fully in decisions — may have better outcomes.

In this episode of Outperform Cancer, I talk with Samira Daswani, founder and CEO of Manta Cares, about how patients can move from overwhelmed to activated.

After being diagnosed with stage 2 triple-positive breast cancer at age 30, Samira saw firsthand how much burden is placed on patients and families. That experience led her to build Manta Cares, an award-winning platform that helps cancer patients and caregivers prepare for appointments, understand options, manage symptoms, ask better questions, and access support.

We also talk about Hope AI, biomarker testing, clinical trials, symptom escalation, and why the right language can help patients be heard.

Because speaking up matters.
And patients deserve tools that help them do it.

🎧 Listen to The Outperform Cancer Podcast episode "The Activated Patient Advantage: How Speaking Up Can Improve Cancer Outcomes | Samira Daswani" wherever you get your podcasts.

06/29/2026

Every cancer patient deserves to know that exercise can meaningfully improve cancer outcomes.

The research suggesting a 30–50% reduction in recurrence risk is extraordinary. To put that in perspective, that is similar to the risk reduction I receive from anastrozole, the estrogen-suppressing medication I take as part of my standard breast cancer treatment.

When I was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer, it made sense to me to layer multiple evidence-based anti-cancer strategies alongside my standard-of-care medications. Exercise became one of those strategies.

I have now been cancer-free for six years. We will never know exactly why, but I believe my comprehensive approach has mattered.

Patients deserve to know that there are things they can do — not instead of treatment, but alongside it — that may help improve their odds.

06/23/2026

If mammograms save lives, why are women still being diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer? That question is at the center of my new Outperform Cancer conversation with Ryan Polselli, M.D., a fellowship-trained breast imaging radiologist and founder & CEO of MammoLink®.

And the answer is not: “mammograms don’t work.” Mammograms do save lives. But too often, the screening system is not working well enough for patients.
- Too many women receive genetic testing only after a cancer diagnosis.
- Too many women are not getting screened annually
- Too many women do not know whether they have dense breasts.
- Too many women face unnecessary friction — scheduling, callbacks, access barriers, cost concerns, and fragmented follow-up.

Dr. Polselli and I talked about why breast cancer screening needs to become more personalized and strategic. If we approach it as an important anti-cancer strategy instead of a box to be checked, perhaps we could change outcomes.

As a metastatic breast cancer patient, this conversation is personal for me. My cancer was not found because a routine system worked perfectly. It was found because I knew something was wrong and kept pushing for more testing.

That is one of the biggest messages I hope women take away from this episode:
- Know your risk.
- Know your breast density.
- Stay current with screening.
- And if something does not feel right, keep asking!

Breast cancer screening should not be treated like a checkbox. It should be treated like a strategy.

Watch the full interview with Dr. Ryan Polselli here: https://youtu.be/kJB2S9BKz1o

Or listen to the interview on your favorite podcast platform by searching for Outperform Cancer.

06/15/2026

Last week, Outperform Cancer made the newswire for the first time. Brassica Protection Products issued a national press release highlighting my conversation with Dr. Jed Fahey, one of the world's leading experts on sulforaphane and broccoli sprouts.

When I first contacted Dr. Fahey 4 years ago, I wasn't thinking about podcasts, media coverage, or press releases. I was trying to answer a much more personal question: Were there evidence-based strategies beyond standard treatment for metastatic breast cancer that might improve my odds?

That search eventually became Outperform Cancer.

What makes this recognition particularly meaningful is that it wasn't really about me. It was about helping more people discover an important scientific conversation. Sulforaphane—a compound found in broccoli sprouts—has now been studied in more than 3,000 publications and 136 human clinical studies.

New research continues to explore its potential role in detoxification, cancer prevention, cancer stem cells, and possible synergy with cancer therapies.

Will sulforaphane eventually become part of standard cancer care? No one knows. But I firmly believe patients deserve access to the credible scientific information that exists.

One of the reasons I started Outperform Cancer was because I saw how long it often takes for promising research to reach patients. My goal is simple: help bridge that gap by bringing researchers, physicians, and patients into the same conversation.

Thank you to everyone who has supported this mission. It's encouraging to see these discussions reaching a broader audience.

I look back on this photo from four years ago and remember how encouraged I felt when I discovered the potential impact of sulforaphane. Should broccoli sprouts and phytonutrients be part of the conversation around cancer prevention and treatment? If you haven't seen the interview with Dr. Fahey yet, I'd love to hear what you think.

Press release: https://www.einpresswire.com/article/919227586/outperform-cancer-spotlights-emerging-sulforaphane-research-as-global-cancer-burden-reaches-record-levels

Listen to my interview with Dr. Fahey on your favorite podcast platform or watch it on YouTube: https://youtu.be/rGntBgMdl_A?si=ZztgAugWOkWq8zk6

06/12/2026

Broccoli sprouts were the first anti-cancer strategy I ever researched. In fact, Dr. Jed Fahey was the first cancer researcher I ever contacted. At the time, I had just begun asking a question that would eventually change my life: "What else can I do?"

As cancer patients, we're often focused on treatments, scans, and appointments. But I became fascinated by the growing body of research suggesting that certain lifestyle and dietary choices may influence the biological pathways involved in cancer development, progression, and recurrence.

One area that caught my attention was cruciferous vegetables. Some observational studies have reported that people with the highest intake of cruciferous vegetables had dramatically lower rates of colorectal cancer. Other large meta-analyses show more modest—but still meaningful—associations.

While these studies don't prove causation and can't be attributed solely to sulforaphane, they raise an important question: Are we paying enough attention to the role nutrition may play in cancer prevention and long-term outcomes?

That question led me down a rabbit hole that eventually became Outperform Cancer. Today, I've been "No Evidence of Disease" for six years. I can't tell you exactly why. No one can.

What I can tell you is that I wasn't satisfied with relying solely on standard care. I wanted to understand every evidence-based strategy that might improve my odds. Broccoli sprouts became one of many complementary approaches I incorporated alongside conventional treatment.

In this clip, Dr. Jed Fahey discusses the research linking cruciferous vegetables with reduced cancer risk and explains why sulforaphane continues to generate excitement among cancer researchers.

I'd love to hear your thoughts: Should nutrition play a bigger role in cancer prevention and cancer care?

06/10/2026

Most people think of broccoli as just a vegetable. But it contains sulforaphane—a compound that has been studied for decades, with extensive preclinical research and multiple human clinical trials involving cancer prevention, cancer patients, and high-risk populations.

In this episode of Outperform Cancer, I sit down with Dr. Jed Fahey one of the world’s leading experts on sulforaphane. What stood out to me is how much we already know.
• Sulforaphane impacts key cancer pathways like detoxification, inflammation, and oxidative stress
• It may enhance the effectiveness of certain cancer therapies
• It shows activity against cancer stem cells in preclinical research
• Broccoli sprouts can contain far higher levels of sulforaphane precursors than mature broccoli

We also talk about its significant potential to impact prevention -- at a very low cost and with very little effort.

For decades, research has suggested that a meaningful percentage of cancers may be preventable through diet and lifestyle—and compounds like sulforaphane help explain why.

This isn’t about replacing standard treatment. It’s about understanding what else might matter—and what patients can start doing today to better support their outcomes.

If you choose to use a supplement instead of growing your own broccoli sprouts, make sure it has been third-party tested. You can go to my website www.outperformcancer.com to learn more and find out which products has personally vetted such as those containing .

If you or someone you love is navigating cancer, I think this conversation will give you practical ideas you can act on immediately.

🎧 Full episode: https://youtu.be/rGntBgMdl_A?si=cYZe3i-Q-MrwSuRM

Or listen on your favorite podcast platform.

Sulforaphane and cancer: how broccoli sprouts may target cancer ste...

06/05/2026

What do you do when you’re told: “There’s nothing more we can do”? That’s the moment Sid Sijbrandij faced after exhausting standard of care for osteosarcoma.

Instead of accepting it, he did something radically different. He went “Founder Mode” on his cancer—applying the same mindset he used to build GitLab to create a new way of approaching treatment.

What emerged wasn’t just a set of therapies. It was a new operating system for cancer—one built on:
→ maximal diagnostics
→ continuous data collection
→ testing treatments in parallel
→ learning faster than the disease evolves

In this episode, we break that system down—not just as Sid’s story, but as a framework patients can use today.

The full episode is now live on podcast platforms (Outperform Cancer) as well as Substack and YouTube.
Substack: https://substack.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbIDNa9QlKs&t=9s

What would you do if you were told there were no options left?

🎥 A New Operating System for Cancer: How Sid Sijbrandij Is Outpacin...