Episode 106 | Why Your Cancer Treatment Might Be Missing the Most Important Factor with Dr. Nasha Winters

[00:00:00] Dr. Katie Deming MD: What if cancer isn't your enemy at all? But a wake up call from your body? For decades, we've been told it's all about genetics, yet cancer rates continue to rise.

[00:00:10] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Today I sit down with the one and only Dr. Nasha Winters, naturopathic doctor, educator, and author. She's walked alongside thousands of people facing cancer and has now educated thousands of practitioners in a terrain based approach to cancer. she believes the real story of cancer is what's happening in your mitochondria.

[00:00:33] Dr. Katie Deming MD: You'll hear why her motto is, test, assess, don't guess. How to get out of overwhelm of endless supplements and diets and why fasting became one of the most powerful tools in her own healing

[00:00:47] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Let's dive in.

[00:00:57] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Hello, I'm Dr. Katie Deming, and this is [00:01:00] the Born to Heal Podcast where we explore holistic practices for cancer prevention and healing. Let's welcome Dr. Nasha Winters to the show.

[00:01:10] Dr. Nasha Winters: Ah,

[00:01:10] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Nayha, I'm so happy to have you. Thank you for being here.

[00:01:13] Dr. Nasha Winters: so mutual. We had such a great conversation when you got to hang out with me on my podcast, but this is a big treat to be on the other side of the table. Thank you.

[00:01:22] Dr. Katie Deming MD: You are welcome. I'm super excited. And you know, I was listening actually on your site, dr naisha.com. You have a beautiful video where you share your story, and I actually really encourage people to go there and watch it because it's such a beautiful speech that you gave. But you said something in that speech that I was like, huh, she is just speaking my language.

[00:01:46] Dr. Katie Deming MD: So you said cancer is the ultimate wake up call.

[00:01:50] Dr. Katie Deming MD: How you choose to respond may have the greatest impact on your outcome. Than any treatment that you choose.

[00:01:59] Dr. Katie Deming MD: [00:02:00] Oh, it gives me chills just to even hear it because it's such truth across my three decades, you know, three plus decades in this field, both in my own experience going through a cancer journey, but also with the thousands and thousands of patients I've worked with directly and the tens of thousands I've worked with indirectly.

[00:02:19] Dr. Nasha Winters: That seems to be a very common sort of theme in that the way, of course, that initial information is shock to the system, but when people can kind of recalibrate, and meet it head on in a very different way than maybe our culture has given us the template for, I find that people definitely have different and better outcomes.

[00:02:42] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And what does that mean? Like what is a different way than the way that we've been acculturated into approaching cancer? What does that mean for you?

[00:02:51] Dr. Nasha Winters: Well, for me it means, I mean, my gosh in 1971, which is actually the year of my birth, is when President Nixon started the National Cancer Institute [00:03:00] and, claimed the war on cancer. And I think that's where this conversation starts for me. But it made sense at that time because we were coming out of World War I, world War ii, Korean War, we were still in the throes of Vietnam War.

[00:03:12] Dr. Nasha Winters: And that was sort of a unifying global experience at that time. And so it made sense to use a reference, you know, a metaphor like that. But, um, unfortunately, 50 plus years later, we've not won. Any wars. And in fact, we're almost flatlined as far as our, our outcomes. We, we may be living longer with cancer, but we are also being diagnosed more often with cancer, and we really haven't changed our overall survival rates using this sort of mental warring mentality.

[00:03:47] Dr. Nasha Winters: And that piece is one component of it. The other piece is that we get into these conversations around like the, you know, the f cancer movements and the, I'm gonna battle this and I'm in the fight from a and there's [00:04:00] just, there's something that just keeps that nervous system and such a hyperactive, sympathetic drive that doesn't allow healing no matter how good the treatment is to land.

[00:04:12] Dr. Nasha Winters: Um, when we're in a sympathetic state, we can't receive anything. Standard of care, alternative care or anything in between. And so, I appreciate that people will resonate to what makes sense for them. But I've seen as a whole, when we continue to battle something that is actually us, that doesn't make sense to me.

[00:04:32] Dr. Nasha Winters: And when I can help people understand that maybe this is not an enemy, maybe this is more of, as you noted, a wake up call or an opportunity or even a messenger of revisiting this in a different way to understand that cancer is us, it's part of us, it's an expression of us. how might we approach it differently if we come from that mindset?

[00:04:53] Dr. Nasha Winters: Yeah.

[00:04:53] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Well, and my listeners will know that I resonate with a hundred percent with what you said, just given my [00:05:00] TEDx talk on the battle language and cancer and all of this. And, and, and that's what I say, I say exactly that is that Nixon was selling something. That's when we use this kind of language, when we're trying to mobilize,you know, some kind of movement.

[00:05:16] Dr. Katie Deming MD: But the problem is when we use it. Individually in our healing, you're exactly right of that sympathetic activation. And we stay in that fight or flight state, and you and I both know from just being with so many people who are healing cancers, that the healing happens in peace. The healing happens in a state of wellbeing.

[00:05:42] Dr. Katie Deming MD: It happens when we are in a state of rest in the body. And you can't do that when you're, you've got this battle that you're fighting. And then also with, we don't even mean to do it inadvertently, you know, if our family members are talking like that and then we are like, I don't really feel [00:06:00] like fighting this, then it becomes this weird, you know, just, it's all language.

[00:06:05] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Right? But, but it has an activation in the body and so it's so. Important. And I love what you're, you know what I heard behind what you're saying there is it's, it's like, let's meet the messenger. Let's look at this as an invitation for, okay, how did I get here? Right. And,

[00:06:23] Dr. Katie Deming MD: and you know, I've heard you say this, and I've also said this, that we all have cancer, right? Like we all have cancerous cells in our body, but we don't all develop tumors because when you have a healthy human being that is loved and nurtured and nourished in the right ways, we're not amenable to growing cancer. And I think maybe that brings me to my next question, that what is a metabolic approach to cancer? And why is that revolutionary?

[00:06:54] Dr. Nasha Winters: Well, it's funny 'cause your audience probably has heard you say this a million times as well, but just to give [00:07:00] context, because I'm such a, I'm a story collector and I, and I really, really appreciate context when it comes to things like this. But back in 1914, Dr. Theodore Boveri is who gave voice to, or the idea of the theory of the somatic mutation theory of cancer, cancer being, something of genetic deformities, genetic manipulation that is basically bad luck and basically something that you're disempowered to do anything around.

[00:07:27] Dr. Nasha Winters: So that mantra has sort of played through for the pla past 111 years or so, but a few years after, another kind of quirky. Somewhat controversial character came on the scene, um, by the name of Dr. Otto Warburg, who said, wait a minute. I think there's something happening a bit upstream to the DNA, damage to the DNA expression.

[00:07:47] Dr. Nasha Winters: and that gave rise to this idea of the, metabolic or the mitochondrial theory of cancer, where he was observing that the, that the mitochondrion in our tumors and our tumor cells looked very [00:08:00] different than those in our healthy cells, and that they were using energy in a different way. And he actually, that theory.

[00:08:08] Dr. Nasha Winters: Pushed out Bovary theory for almost 30 years, where that was where energy, literally, I mean that pun, and as well as literally, um, all of our focus was in biochemistry and looking more at that aspect until Watson and CR came along in the 1950s. And actually a woman, found the, the me, the, you know, helix of the DNA, but they took good credit for it.

[00:08:29] Dr. Nasha Winters: And then it pendulum us back over into this plight of the DNA being, the cause of our cancer. And yet what we started to learn early on as early as the 1950s and sixties is that if this truly was a genetic disease, we would remove the hard drive, the nuclei of a cell, and we would replace the, um, nuclei, say of a cancer cell with the nuclei of a healthy cell.

[00:08:55] Dr. Nasha Winters: And if this was a genetic disease, you would turn that into a healthy cell. And the opposite [00:09:00] is true. If you removed and replaced the nuclei of a cancer cell with a nuclei of a healthy cell, you should turn that into a cancer. In the thousands of times that has been repeated, that's never happened. And yet we have beat the drum of this genetic mutation, bad luck theory for so long now that we don't even see the forest for the trees.

[00:09:20] Dr. Nasha Winters: There was a really cool thing that happened though, in that people like Dr. Mina Bissell from the 1980s started doing her research and speaking to the research about maybe we should look at what those cells, what the medium that those cells are growing in. That was known as the extracellular matrix that, you know, the ECM that she started talking about back then, still, by the way, doing research and still sort of pushed into the corner.

[00:09:46] Dr. Nasha Winters: Um, and then people like Dr. Tom Siegfried started speaking to, um, in his research and then later his book, cancer as a Metabolic Disease back around 2010, 2011, kind of dusted off the Warburg theory saying, Hey, we've not made a [00:10:00] big shift doing this genetic approach. Maybe we should reconsider our, our way of thinking about this.

[00:10:06] Dr. Nasha Winters: And then. Even as, as recent as a few months ago, an article came out in nature suggesting that perhaps we're putting the DNA theory to bed, and that truly the metabolic theory is now one to pay attention to. And so what that means to me, now that you have kind of a history and watching the pendulum go back and forth and kind of just sit there as well, what I understand it to be is that those mitochondria that we used to all be just taught in sixth grade biology was just producers of a TP, which is very important.

[00:10:37] Dr. Nasha Winters: You don't live without a TP energy, but we've learned a lot in the last 20 years or so that they do a lot more than that. And the way I like to describe it to colleagues and to patients is they do three major jobs. One of them is they take in, they receive, they're receivers of information, all information, food, water, light, [00:11:00] sound.

[00:11:00] Dr. Nasha Winters: toxins, you know, medicines, herbs, but also thoughts and people are taken in as information. Their second job is then to translate that information, make sense of it, and if all is working well in the translation device, then great, you're making sense of that, and you're recognizing patterns and you're recognizing potential sort of trajectories.

[00:11:22] Dr. Nasha Winters: And then their third job is signaling, communicating out to the surrounding, other organelles in the cell, the, the extracellular matrix, the surrounding cells, the surrounding tissues, the surrounding organs, structure, et cetera, and even beyond us. And so. That's where the information has really gotten me excited in the last 20, 30 years is that some of my first experiences with thinking about cancer differently was through kind of a quantum lens.

[00:11:50] Dr. Nasha Winters: And I know that gets really esoteric there really quickly for people, but I started following the work of people like Candace Pert back in the early 1990s, um, who [00:12:00] talked about the molecules of emotion and the fact that our thoughts can literally change our, our DNA expression and our, our immune system activities and even our microbiome.

[00:12:10] Dr. Nasha Winters: We are learning today. I even ran across the work of Dr. Bruce Lipton, who it would be another 20 years before his book, biology of Belief. Came out into the masses. So I was reading his research and applying it in my own life while it was still at the bench, long before it kind of was launched to the bedside in 2011 when his book came out.

[00:12:33] Dr. Nasha Winters: But those are the things I think of that we've missed. And you just kind of spoke to that as you asked me that question earlier. It's like it's just information. You know, a cancer diagnosis or a cancer expression is just the expression of information. through that filter I talked about of okay, what was put in, how was it translated and how is it being signaled out?

[00:12:53] Dr. Nasha Winters: And that is much more hopeful about what we can do about that than [00:13:00] what maybe standard of care for the past 111 years has told us we could do about that.

[00:13:05] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Absolutely. Well, and you and I, you know, I'm like a, I feel like a newcomer onto this scene, right? Like, only been in this space now for, I don't know, like almost two years, I guess, and you've been like 34 years or something. But it's like, I'm, I'm catching up fast, but all of this is like, it's so resonant with me, like as I left Western medicine and started to look at. Like something's wrong. Like I knew there was something wrong, like had been having these feelings since 2019 and I was like, I just can't. But it wasn't until I left the system

[00:13:42] Dr. Katie Deming MD: that I could really start to see these pieces because we're sold, I mean, indoctrinated into these theories for so long. I mean, I, beyond medical school then, you know, I did a residency in radiation oncology, which is four years.

[00:13:58] Dr. Katie Deming MD: So you'd an internship in internal medicine [00:14:00] and then I did four years of radiation oncology.

[00:14:03] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And in that we have two years of radio biology, which is all based on the genetics. And then two years of radiation physics. And so for me it's almost, it's almost harder actually when you've been so educated into these paradigms of the genetic model for cancer to really step out.

[00:14:26] Dr. Katie Deming MD: But the one thing that I knew when I left, I was like. Okay. 10% of my clients have genetic mutations, the other 90%, and I was mostly treating breast cancer, right? So it was breast and, gynecologic cancers. But like 90% of the time I'd be like, I don't know. It's like, I don't know. I know we say it's genetic, but I'm like, but we actually don't know.

[00:14:48] Dr. Katie Deming MD: It's 90% of the time. And that just didn't sit well with me. And I love, I love how you highlighted the history because medicine is not an exact science and it's political and it's [00:15:00] funding and it's, you know, who's in charge at the time to give, you know, airtime to specific people. And so I love how you demonstrate that, that this has like, been back and forth and there's been the information there, but it depends on who's, you know, in power and who's, you know, driving things at the time.

[00:15:17] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And it really. So important to understand. This is not new.

[00:15:21] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Like this is not new information. Like this is something that has been around for at least a hundred years, but we're starting to understand and apply it in and use it in ways that we can quantify. And I love, that's why I love the work that you do because you're such an advocate of studying the work that you're doing and really understanding it from a scientific perspective.

[00:15:44] Dr. Katie Deming MD: So I'm wondering if you can explain, so now that you've explained it, like what is a metabolic approach? Like what does it look like,

[00:15:51] Dr. Katie Deming MD: like tangibly for people so they understand like what is it the work that the, you teach this, right? And then you have practitioners who are then doing [00:16:00] this approach with people.

[00:16:00] Dr. Katie Deming MD: So just to be

[00:16:01] Dr. Katie Deming MD: clear for my audience, you know that don't go to look to that. You're gonna go see Dr. Nasha herself because she's training hundreds if not thousands of people to do this work. So tell us what that looks like.

[00:16:12] Dr. Nasha Winters: Well, I should probably give a little, again, background context in that. It's not like I woke up one day and said, wow, here's a really great methodology. I, I got this figured, you know, it's been iterative over, as you noted, 34 years, and it started with my own journey. It started with, um, a, a, a simply put a diagnosis of stage four end stage ovarian cancer.

[00:16:32] Dr. Nasha Winters: That was unfortunately missed for so long because I had so many previous comorbidities that we all just thought it was more of the same. Right. And I also wanna iterate that at age 19 when this happened, I didn't think myself unhealthy despite, I had diagnoses of things like polycystic ovarian syndrome, endometriosis, thyroid dysfunction, which later I learned was Hashimoto's, uh, rheumatoid or junior rheumatoid arthritis.

[00:16:54] Dr. Nasha Winters: IBS, those were all my labels. But because they would just throw another pill on the pile, we [00:17:00] just normalized it, right? And so by the time my diagnosis happened, they just was thinking, oh, it's just a flare of your IBS or a flare of your endometriosis. And all of those things were missed. And as someone who's functioned in the oncology, especially gynecological oncology, you can imagine those symptoms would've masked what was really, you know, those previous diagnoses masked it.

[00:17:20] Dr. Nasha Winters: So in that, in my original. Experience with this. I was not given any opportunities to do anything from standard of care because it was actually far too late. So simply put, I had a hundred percent bowel blockage. I had a grapefruit size, um, tumor in my right ovary. I had body filled with, fluid where it shouldn't be known as malignant ascites.

[00:17:38] Dr. Nasha Winters: I had, uh, I had, liver metastasis. I had metastas in all my lymph nodes and lots of little like, sort of shrapnel all over my organs and my abdomen. Um, I had flu around my heart. I was really, really sick and I was on the end of the life game and I was so sick they couldn't even offer me a single dose of chemotherapy.

[00:17:56] Dr. Nasha Winters: And in 1991, there weren't many other options beyond that, [00:18:00] right? So it wasn't like, you know what, we can, we've got some other options today, but none back then. So sent home to die. And my expectation wasn't to live it, to survive it, to fight it, to somehow battle it and win. I had a very curious brain and I really wanted to understand it.

[00:18:17] Dr. Nasha Winters: I wanted to understand how. It could have been missed. I wanted to understand that I'm not looking around anybody in 1991 and the other 19 year olds dealing with something like this. I didn't know anybody in my peer group with cancer. Unfortunately today, that's a very different story, but back then there was, I just didn't know.

[00:18:34] Dr. Nasha Winters: So that's what led me on this journey and the accidental moments that are, of course, you and I very well know, are not accidental at all. That led me to some of my aha moments that allowed me to kick the cam down the road a little bit further, to learn something else and apply that, and then live a little bit longer to learn something else and then apply that.

[00:18:53] Dr. Nasha Winters: That was iterative for about the first 10 years. It was really touch and go. There wasn't, there wasn't Dr. Google, there was no [00:19:00] internet, there were no books out there outside of some very antiquated, old, old books. I, I didn't exist, you know, I had to like learn these things as I went along. By the time I was in medical school, I hid my diagnosis so I could get into medical school.

[00:19:12] Dr. Nasha Winters: uh, you know, I learned a lot of, just from the. Because I left standard of care, I was gonna go to standard of care medical school and ended up in naturopathic school instead because of this diagnosis. So I'm grateful for that because as you noted, um, Dr. Katie, we, I would've had to unlearn a heck of a lot more to possibly survive this than what I was coming in sort of just green and fresh and unhindered by, um, new information.

[00:19:35] Dr. Nasha Winters: Um, because I was a student still, I was reading everything else I could find that was not being taught in my courses, not being taught in my pre-med. And that's how I started running across these other people that I mentioned before. But that's where, by the time I was in medical school and started working with patients and by the time I was in practice started working with patients, I would apply the things I learned to myself, to my patients.

[00:19:55] Dr. Nasha Winters: And as you noted, what also has happened over the 30 plus years [00:20:00] is more access to really amazing testing and evaluations that didn't exist. And so I slowly over time accumulated tools and resources to. Follow people, their personal metrics, their data, versus the dogma that surrounds us all, whether it's from standard of care or from the alternative care place.

[00:20:21] Dr. Nasha Winters: They're pretty dogma driven, both of them. So that's what I've been doing. And in that I learned a few things. I learned that there are 10 main sort of contributors, and this is my filter, my version, it's not the answer, right? But my perspective, there's maybe 10 major drivers of contributing to whether or not, you know, what information's coming into those mitochondria, how it's being translated and how it's being signaled.

[00:20:44] Dr. Nasha Winters: So I called the mitochondrial bucket, and there's of course your upbeat genetics. So things that were passed down from generations, but that you, as Dr. Katie referred to have 90% of the time the ability to change that expression. So that piece is [00:21:00] there. The other piece was what are you fueling your cells with, you know, so specifically what metabolic um, resources, you know, your fats, your sugar, your proteins, your.

[00:21:09] Dr. Nasha Winters: Carbohydrates and the combination of those and even the quality of those food sources. What are you feeding yourselves? And then the third is environmental. I mean, there was a time when we used to be able to test people and wonder if they had environmental toxicity. Today, we just know everybody does. We just don't know how it's res reacting.

[00:21:28] Dr. Nasha Winters: And. Bucket. You know, it's gonna have a different behavior in each of us. My husband loves the smell of diesel. I get nauseous the second I smell it right? Like just, we have different genetics, the way we deal with those things. The fourth is our microbiome. Now all the rage and discussions and research.

[00:21:44] Dr. Nasha Winters: The fifth is even how that impacts our immune system, our immune function. The sixth, there's our inflammatory processes. The seventh is our oxygenation and perfusion processes. The, eighth is our hormone like milieu, hormonal milieu, and how that's [00:22:00] expressing and how it's interacting in the whole sort of neuroendocrine system.

[00:22:03] Dr. Nasha Winters: And then the ninth and 10th buckets are, are sort of stress response and circadian rhythm as well as our mental emotional. So all of those drops contribute. And all of us have different thresholds in our bucket, and all of us have different sort of priorities, like which one is really the driver? And that's what I've learned to do in the methodology I've created is this just simple test, assess, address, don't guess, is like, I evaluate what's in and teach clinicians and allied health professionals and advocates how to evaluate what's in each person's bucket and help create kind of a priority list and an, an approach that is also iterative, recognizing that not a single treatment is gonna do it, right?

[00:22:43] Dr. Nasha Winters: It's like you start here and you retest, and then you iterate, you pivot where you need to, and you're constantly playing in this feedback loop, um, with between yourself, but also your team that's supporting you on this journey.

[00:22:57] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Yeah.

[00:22:58] Dr. Katie Deming MD: that, I think that it's so [00:23:00] helpful to hear you outline it like that and really help people understand. 'cause they're like, I don't understand what the different, and I, I love how you said that the dogma, both in the standard of care and also in the alternative, because there is, but that's the one thing that I love about your approach is like the, it's very systematic and you're, what did you just say?

[00:23:19] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Test, assess, don't guess. Yes. And it's a balance. So it's interesting because coming, this has been, like just a process for myself as I've transitioned from Western medicine is that, you know, coming from Western medicine and, and we have very specific things that we test that are, you know, different than the things that, that you're testing.

[00:23:40] Dr. Katie Deming MD: In in this realm. But, so I was used to testing those specific things and then I came out and then what was interesting is I actually got kind of afraid of the functional medicine approach of like the thousand tests and the thousand supplements. And so it's it interesting, I think that there's this balance too of [00:24:00] like you could literally be testing for everything all day, every day.

[00:24:03] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Like thousands of dollars and thousands of dollars of supplements. And can you speak to that, how your approach is different than a functional medicine approach? Because it was funny 'cause I was thinking, oh, Western medicine, you come out. And then I felt like it's so naive, right? It's like I feel like they're all kind of similar and I'm like, oh wow, no, these things are really different.

[00:24:20] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And then you start to realize like, okay, what are the different aspects? So I'd love to hear your take on functional medicine and how maybe your approach is different or the same

[00:24:29] Dr. Katie Deming MD: or what.

[00:24:30] Dr. Nasha Winters: I think, I think at the end of the day our, the functional medicine, community, the naturopathic community, the sort of vitalistic medical community, all say the same things. We all kind of have the same sound bites, if you will, and we're all like, oh, we get to the root of the cause and we're dealing with the patient.

[00:24:46] Dr. Nasha Winters: But there really is a difference. I think that a lot of folks drawn to the functional medicine realm are. Expats, if you will, of the standard of care model. And they're accustomed to the concept of here's this one target, here's this one test, here's this [00:25:00] one symptom, here's this particular treatment. And so we continue to treat symptoms even though we think we're getting to the root.

[00:25:06] Dr. Nasha Winters: We say, oh, you have this blood deficiency, or this lab is showing this. We have this supplement, you know, or this modality to address it. Well, well you can do that. But then very quickly, which is what I see and what you're alluding to, those patients are now on 50 million things. Right. And I feel like my, my I, I, I think I freaked people out when it would come in with their suitcase or their multiple bags of stuff.

[00:25:28] Dr. Nasha Winters: And I'm like, we're gonna throw all these away, or at least put them away for now. And we're going to prioritize. We're gonna prioritize based on what are the biggest red flag, obvious lowest hanging fruit. Things that are saying, help me now. We're gonna do something for a few weeks. We're gonna retest. And once that's cleared out, we're kind of triaged.

[00:25:49] Dr. Nasha Winters: Then we look at what has bubbled to the surface and work through it that way. It's way less overwhelming. It's way less expensive. You actually do then know what's [00:26:00] doing what. And so I tell people that, um, there's a lot of people out there with amazing clinics that have a million different cool tools. I call 'em the sexy tools.

[00:26:08] Dr. Nasha Winters: You know, like, oh, I do metronomic chemo and I do off label drugs and I do IV vitamin C and hyperbarics and hyperthermia. And I'm like, that's like a 2-year-old with a Maserati. Like, great, you have this amazing machine but you don't know how to use it. You know, like a sophisticated. Personalized way, which is finding the right dose, the right duration, the right combination, um, and, and the right iteration for that person.

[00:26:35] Dr. Nasha Winters: And so that's when I feel like I get to help train the doctors back into, especially those who come in from a functional medicine background. They're like, you mean I don't keep them on these hundred supplements? I'm like, no, let's come back at it through a different lens and let's look at patterns.

[00:26:50] Dr. Nasha Winters: That's what we're starting to eluate. What are the patterns? What are the main patterns? And then let's address those individually or maybe two or three at most [00:27:00] at a time. Because what happens, and you have probably seen this a million times again, where we started our conversation today, if a patient is in a state of duress, anxiety, stress, I don't care how good the treatment is.

[00:27:14] Dr. Nasha Winters: How good the naturopathic treatment, the integrative treatment, the functional medicine treatment, the standard of care treatment. I don't care how good the plan is, if that person is in that state of duress and that has not been addressed, whatever that therapy is coming in is not gonna land. It's not gonna land is intended.

[00:27:33] Dr. Nasha Winters: It may screech the surface a little bit, but it will not integrate in and really move the, the needle on the dial. And so I have a lot of find people who find me and they were like, I've done all the things. I changed my diet, I took all these supplements, I did my walks in the park and I watched the sunrise and I wore my sun, turned off my EMF and I'm still a mess.

[00:27:53] Dr. Nasha Winters: I'm like, well then let's, let's actually talk about that. Like, how does that feel when you even tell me that story? And they're always in [00:28:00] like an extreme stress and duress and it's like, well, why don't we start there? You know, and, and even though I kind of talk about the 10th drop in the bucket being the mental emotional or the stress response and kind of leaving that at the end, if we scooch that up to the front, we have a lot more, impact and a lot different and better outcome.

[00:28:18] Dr. Nasha Winters: But the reality is, if I started there with folks, they would close that book right up and put it on a shelf, never look at it again. So we lead them there through the little sort of morsels, the little, you know, nuggets, if you will, that lead them, oh, I can do the tangibles. And then we walk them gently as quickly as they're willing and able to, the intangibles that are, there's not a pill, a potion, a remedy, a treatment modality on the planet that can deal with that head on, um, until they really meet themselves.

[00:28:51] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for giving that, because I, this is, that is the hard part. It's like,

[00:28:57] Dr. Katie Deming MD: I mean, grocery bags like coming in [00:29:00] with like three bags worth of supplements and I'm like, oh my.

[00:29:04] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Gosh, like it's just overwhelm. I'm overwhelmed. I'm overwhelmed even thinking about it. Like I can't. And you know, this is one of the things that you hear so common in the cancer space.

[00:29:12] Dr. Katie Deming MD: It's like my whole day is like figuring out when I can take this supplement versus this one and I can't eat with this. And it just becomes like their whole day. Like you, that person that you described doing all the things, and it's almost like this checklist that they're like, I just gotta do the check boxes.

[00:29:29] Dr. Katie Deming MD: But I love how you talk about, okay, what is the main thing for you that we need to address first? And then addressing that. And also what that does is that it reduces overwhelm. Which overwhelm is like the number one problem in my mind

[00:29:44] Dr. Katie Deming MD: for people who are healing cancer. That is the thing I hear all day, all. Like all day long is I'm completely overwhelmed. I don't know who to trust because there's a thousand things out there and everyone's saying something opposite, right? You, you can find, you know, there's this [00:30:00] person saying you need to eat a full raw vegan diet. And then these people saying, no, you know, plants are poison or what, you know, all the things.

[00:30:07] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And it's just so confusing. So I love that you, you know, really have it data driven and then looking at, okay, like what is the first thing that we need to address and keep it manageable? And then I wanted to bring something up because when you were describing that with the stress and the mental, emotional, you know, component.

[00:30:24] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And one of the things that I have noticed, this is just something in like in my limited experience in this new space, is that the mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of the cancer are hard to address until you get someone's diet corrected.

[00:30:43] Dr. Nasha Winters: Yeah, there's.

[00:30:45] Dr. Katie Deming MD: So can you, can you speak to that? Is that, is that a true thing?

[00:30:47] Dr. Katie Deming MD: I'm like, I, I'm like, if I don't get your diet corrected, I, I'm sorry, but like the emotional stuff is almost impossible to do. Is that, do you have that experience as well?

[00:30:56] Dr. Nasha Winters: Oh my word. Well, it's, you know, I, I think about myself back at that time. [00:31:00] So I was, came from extreme poverty. We were latchkey kids and we lived on extremely highly processed food. So that left my nervous system really malnourished and really in a, in a lower immune state. Um, add high end, a 10 out of 10 ACE score to that adverse childhood events.

[00:31:17] Dr. Nasha Winters: I was like, I was kind of screwed from the get go really in those pieces. And later on I learned my epigenetics. I'm like, wow. I mean, it was kind of a, I'm, of course I had cancer. Like those are the way I look at it today. But I, I wasn't able to think rationally. In those first few years, it was so externalized, rushing to all the things because my body was literally starving to death.

[00:31:41] Dr. Nasha Winters: And so for me, my problem was that I was, I'd been a, what I call junk food vegetarian. Really, I was a car Arian from age 16 until my diagnosis. So I was already malnourished before I became that 'cause of just the poor nourishment of being extremely, extremely poverty stricken. So then I went to that which [00:32:00] got rid of a few other important nutrients.

[00:32:01] Dr. Nasha Winters: And then when I got diagnosed, the only information out there was about going like Gerson or going very, very, you know, raw food vegan. And I did that for the first several years. And I can't even tell you, like, I can't believe I'm, I survived that honestly, because I was so also dogmatic about it that even when my clinicians were telling me when I was in medical school, looking at my labs, looking at my tongue, feeling my pulse.

[00:32:26] Dr. Nasha Winters: 'cause we had I Chinese medicine doctors on my team too. Um, they're like, you're dying. Like, you're so malnourished right now. You have to bring on an egg. You know, like they were just like, please for the love of God. And then I became a vegetarian for 17 years after that, which helped. 'cause like the lights started to come on as eggs and a little bit of dairy, but I was really reactive dairy.

[00:32:44] Dr. Nasha Winters: Like I just had to learn iteratively along the way. But my brain. Did not function the way it needed to. My rationale, my, my emotional liability lay, you know, was really there. I was super emotionally out of balance. And that's what I've [00:33:00] seen with my other patients is that until we can deeply nourish you, settle that nervous system, give your body the, the building blocks that it needs to repair to,

[00:33:12] Dr. Nasha Winters: To actually evaluate the environment, you know, to be on recon of like, are those cells doing what they should be doing? we don't have those tools when we're malnourished. And there's even a whole emerging field known as metabolic psychiatry, of which we've been able to show clinical trials, not just theoretics, of people reversing things like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, even anorexia nervosa with carbohydrate restricted diets to help the brain.

[00:33:43] Dr. Nasha Winters: Retrack and connect to the gut in a very different way. So yeah, I'm with you. I don't see people being able to spiritually bypass a crappy diet. I don't, I don't see people be able to just diet [00:34:00] away, and bypass the traumas or the emotions in their lives either. They really are kind of a, a dual track

[00:34:08] Dr. Nasha Winters: and, and we've gotten so much more data in the last few years really showing the impact of how our microbiome is sort of the connecting point between our brain and our gut.

[00:34:18] Dr. Nasha Winters: And so very responsive to the information we feed it. And so it's easy to see changes in the brain. If someone's living on too many carbs or processed foods or chemical, you know, chemical induced foods, it's easy to see that light up on the brain maps. It's also easy to see that in people's labs, and so if we can work with them together, you're going to move further faster when you're addressing both simultaneously.

[00:34:44] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Yeah, no, absolutely. It's so interesting though, how I was like. wasn't making progress on the emotional and stuff if their diet, if they wouldn't be willing to do both, you know? And so it's like e exactly as you said. So now I always start with like, okay, let's [00:35:00] make sure the diet is, you know, helping them get nourished and you know, obviously we're like chronically malnourished as a society and just not getting the right foods.

[00:35:10] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And then also the information that's been given, the food pyramid and all of that did not help. Right. So, th that, that's like really helpful to hear that piece. And then I, what I wanna ask you about actually, because I know that you've done some fasting and you know that now I've become like

[00:35:26] Dr. Katie Deming MD: super fascinated and basically going all in on fasting. What has your experience been with prolonged water fasting, both personally and then, I know you've had a lot of, you know, seen a lot of people do fasting as well in relation to cancer specifically.

[00:35:41] Dr. Nasha Winters: one very important part of my history, was as mentioned at the time of my diagnosis, what landed me partially in the ER was. Ex excruciating pain, which led to realizing I had a complete bowel blockage. And so even in standard of care today, we'll, we'll usually hospitalize somebody and to do what they call bowel rest.

[00:35:58] Dr. Nasha Winters: And that's typically like nothing by mouth. [00:36:00] And you know, sometimes they do an NG tube or something, but basically they say, don't eat right. That's our solution. And let's see if it resolves on an own, on its own. And if it doesn't, then we do surgery. Well, that bowel blockage, they literally sent me home to die.

[00:36:12] Dr. Nasha Winters: They would, I'd come back in to have my fluid drained every few days for the first few weeks, and then once a week for another few weeks, and then a couple times a month for another couple. And that, you know, kind of took about four or five months before the ascites was dry, dried up, dried up. But for me, what's really interesting is the accidental aspect of, well, every time I ate it caused excruciating pain, it caused extreme nausea, and then it created this sort of psychologic aversion.

[00:36:40] Dr. Nasha Winters: And so I didn't eat at all, Katie for two and a half months. Two and a half months.

[00:36:46] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And no TPN, like they weren't giving you TPN or

[00:36:49] Dr. Nasha Winters: no one, they, they didn't want to know anything that I was doing. It was incredible. Like I couldn't get anybody to monitor me nothing in the beginning. And

[00:36:57] Dr. Katie Deming MD: so

[00:36:57] Dr. Katie Deming MD: you are literally fasted for two and a half [00:37:00] months

[00:37:00] Dr. Katie Deming MD: just because you couldn't eat.

[00:37:02] Dr. Nasha Winters: And I could sip on a, I managed to be able to sip on ice, like chew on ice cubes, sip on water, like very tiny sips.

[00:37:08] Dr. Nasha Winters: 'cause even if I took a little bit more, I would just throw it up immediately. And, ILI ran across something in my studies about something known as PAL Dark OT to BEYA is a, is its Latin name, and that it had some impact on cancer cell, ovarian cancer cell line. So I managed to find that my, in a local herbalist.

[00:37:25] Dr. Nasha Winters: and made that by the gallon and sipped on that throughout the week. That's it for two and a half months. I didn't know anything about salt. I didn't know, like it would've been really nice to know the things I know today. It would've been really nice. But I think because I'd lived such the first 19 years of my life in such extreme inflammation, autoimmune dysfunction, immune dysfunction in general, psychological distress, um, vagal nerve distress, like all the things, it was actually such a welcome relief to my body.

[00:37:53] Dr. Nasha Winters: ‘ cause it could focus on healing other things. And so for me, when I did start to eat. I [00:38:00] kind of didn't choose the best things in the beginning, but I know better now. It was so profound for me that that was something that I kept doing throughout and have been ever since for 34 years. Fasting has been like, I easily fast at three day water fast every single month.

[00:38:15] Dr. Nasha Winters: For 30 some years. Right. And then different times of the year, I might do a longer one, 10 days, two weeks here and there. That was long before we started getting research from people like Balter Longo and others. It was book fasting cancer came out recently. He's a little more plant-based and a little higher carb than I'm favorable for, but he still talks about this.

[00:38:34] Dr. Nasha Winters: And then I ran across, in my early years, coming outta my diagnosis, I ran across the work of a man by the name of Dr. Moshi from 1909, who showed the absolute debulking impact of a tumor just from fasting alone. And we naturally fasted people up until the 1960s, until somebody in the industry got an idea of, Hey, we should give them things like ensure and boost instead.

[00:38:56] Dr. Nasha Winters: And we should make sure that no matter what, they don't go hungry and that no matter what they [00:39:00] eat and no matter what, they don't lose weight. We completely lost the understanding that, cachexia muscle wasting of cancer is actually driven. By overfeeding and renourishing and specifically by the maCroneutrient imbalance of giving it all carbs.

[00:39:17] Dr. Nasha Winters: So even in the American Cancer Society food recommendation, like go and have a, you know, a dairy queen blizzard or make an angel eat angel food cake pre-made from your grocery store or gelatin, you know, jello, not good jello, but like red dye number 80 jello or whatever. That's literally still in the a CS playbook of what to eat if you're going through a cancer diagnosis to not lose weight.

[00:39:38] Dr. Nasha Winters: And it's all carbs, all sugar. And yet that's what drives, kicks up the cytokines that drives the inflammatory processes that drives more of this muscle wasting, which can claim the life of between 50 and 70% of patients dealing with cancer depending on the research you look at. And so I accidentally stumbled into the world of fasting and it was probably what [00:40:00] saved my life.

[00:40:00] Dr. Nasha Winters: When I chose to go a very high carb route for the next 17 plus years, it's probably what saved me. Right. And then in 2009 when I started really understanding, because then people were starting to be able to talk about fasting, we weren't allowed to talk about fasting. We weren't allowed to say the word ketogenic, even though I started putting my own patients in 2003 on carb restricted diets and started working with fasting and leading group fasts and leading these processes.

[00:40:29] Dr. Nasha Winters: We kind of do it in the closet. Right. And so it's just been such an interesting place that now it's probably the most profound tool we have in the cancer space. And it's free.

[00:40:41] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Yeah.

[00:40:41] Dr. Nasha Winters: Okay.

[00:40:42] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Yeah. No. Well, and I, that's a fascinating story that basically you were forced into it from, you know, basically 'cause you couldn't eat with a bowel obstruction

[00:40:54] Dr. Katie Deming MD: and then that you used it, you know, all through those years doing three day fast and then [00:41:00] you've done the longer fast.

[00:41:01] Dr. Katie Deming MD: So you've done like a 14 day fast.

[00:41:03] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And what was your experience doing that?

[00:41:05] Dr. Nasha Winters: I, I told my husband. I would very easily be a Breatharian. Like I feel my whole body and being always feels better fasted. And I know I'm a hearing in my head all of those who are like focused in the disordered eating space. It's not that it's not about a fear of food, it's about.

[00:41:22] Dr. Nasha Winters: Something that happens in my psychology, in my physiology, ketone bodies, and I are really good friends. It just smooths the ride of all my life, of all my inflammatory processes, of all of my weird, like I don't have, I'm missing gstp one and GST T one. these are SNPs that mean I don't detox well at all.

[00:41:42] Dr. Nasha Winters: Actually. I have to help my body. So I think it gives my body a support for that. I have a lot of issues around inflammation and autoimmune conditions, so it just turns that faucet right off on those processes. it calms my nervous system. It actually changes my HRV drastically, where for some people it [00:42:00] might, impact it as stress.

[00:42:01] Dr. Nasha Winters: My body perceives it as rest. and that's the way it's been for me. So for me, I get by the, like, day two, I'm a little peckish 'cause it's more habitual. By day three. I feel like I could keep fasting forever. And I have to really, you know, I, I now pace myself. I'm like, it's, I'm only gonna do it for three days or for five days or for 10.

[00:42:20] Dr. Nasha Winters: I could do it forever. And having been at the worst of my health and surviving, and not just thriving, but thriving for two and a half months without it, I know what my body is capable of. So I have no fear or concern. And I'm also very good at listening of when it's time to break that fast and how to break that fast.

[00:42:40] Dr. Nasha Winters: I'm really, really queued in on. But yeah, it's a tool that is still my favorite go-to. And if I get, like I was on the communal for my 50th birthday. I walked five and a half weeks on the communal North Day by myself with a 22 pound backpack. And then the first week I got a gluten exposure and I forgot to bring my low-dose naltrexone.

[00:42:57] Dr. Nasha Winters: I was in excruciating [00:43:00] pain for the next two weeks. Like I and TMI did not poop at all. I had to TMI manually remove things after about two weeks because I was gonna end up with a bowel blockage again, and I was never gonna go down that road. So I managed to go and water fast. Only lots of electrolytes though.

[00:43:17] Dr. Nasha Winters: Um, water fast, only with electrolytes for five days. Walking the Camino, putting in an average of 28 to 30 kilometers a day.

[00:43:25] Dr. Nasha Winters: With a 22 pound backpack, I felt freaking fantastic and I would've kept it going. But I thought to myself, you know, no one's gonna believe me when this is done. And I blogged about my experience, but it took all the inflammation away, all of it.

[00:43:40] Dr. Nasha Winters: It got my, my bowels moving again. It got my psychology racked in it 'cause it was rough going there for a couple weeks. and so it was a tool that I lean on again and again and again and encourage and support people. And I love, oh my gosh, I love that I have colleagues that I can now send people to, to safely do these longer [00:44:00] term, uh, water fast, who also then know how to carefully, safely, appropriately bring them back out of it at the end.

[00:44:07] Dr. Nasha Winters: 'cause there's a lot of people doing long water fast, but there's not a lot of people pulling them out of it correctly. And so I'm grateful for you to that.

[00:44:13] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Yeah. Well, and I mean that's the only reason why I'm doing it. 'cause I was like, oh no, there are people who do this, so let me just send my clients I water fasting's Great. So I'll send them. And the truth is that. It makes sense for what the many of these facilities start, they didn't start in the cancer space, right.

[00:44:29] Dr. Katie Deming MD: So in their plant-based, you know, and doing amazing work, like I love the work of do Dr. Goldhammer and True North and amazing. But then with the specific lens of cancer, I was like, oh no, no fruit juice. Like I just with the refeeding and all of that. So, for me it was more like a necessity where I was like, okay, there's a need, you know, in this space.

[00:44:49] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And then also I was seeing just such profound, you know, and it's so much more and you're describing that it, people really get quiet and calm inside themselves. And [00:45:00] remember we said the number one problem is overwhelm, like the fasting really. And most people don't feel amazing the way that you feel because your body is used to functioning on ketones.

[00:45:10] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And a lot of people come in, they're like, you know, the first five days are horrible 'cause they have the keto flu and they're, you know, just getting used to that. But. They get quiet inside, you know, and that, that quietness and then the emotions come to the surface, right? So not only are you detoxing the toxins from your fat cells, but then also the emotional detox.

[00:45:32] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And for me, it was like, I, you know, when I saw first, the first few cases of the autophagy and cancers going away, I am like, I'm sold. Like, I, I mean, I never saw anything like that in, in western medicine. I would've thought that was a miracle, you know?

[00:45:45] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And so that brought me in. Then what's kept me in this space and now really having me go full forward is that it is really one of those beautiful mind body, spirit healing experiences.

[00:45:59] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And [00:46:00] it's hard, you know, like

[00:46:02] Dr. Katie Deming MD: not everyone feels great, but that's part of the growth and the, you know, beauty that comes out of it is really those, you know, the challenge I tell people, you know, we're going on a vision quest. Your vision quest is gonna look different than the person next to you who's, you know, in their home. But this is really like, they're going into the wilderness, you know, alone

[00:46:21] Dr. Katie Deming MD: and, you know, finding themselves through the process of fasting. It's really beautiful and obviously it's like such an ancient practice,

[00:46:28] Dr. Katie Deming MD: you know, that we just lost track.

[00:46:30] Dr. Nasha Winters: exactly every spiritual, you know, s system out there has this as part of the journey. I mean, it's just incredible to me that we have kind of gotten away from it and we've gotten away to, to just really fearing, you know, putting the fear of God in people of don't fast no matter what, don't go hungry.

[00:46:48] Dr. Nasha Winters: And we've just put ourselves like, you must have your three meals a day with your snacks in between. And if you go more than two hours, you get uncomfortable, you better stuff your face again, like we have gotten so [00:47:00] uncomfortable with being hungry. Being hungry isn't a bad thing. And especially when you start to learn to get clear about what's hunger at that physiologic, I truly need to feed myself something.

[00:47:12] Dr. Nasha Winters: And then what's hunger for something missing in your life?

[00:47:17] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Yeah. Well, and that's the thing that, that when they're fasting, you know, we have them come off social media and limit screen time and then they're not working. And it's that discomfort of the, you know, the food was a coping mechanism. The overworking was a coping mechanism, the, the, you know, screens and the social media and all that stuff.

[00:47:38] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And we have not only learned to not be like, not how, we haven't learned how to be with hunger, but we haven't learned how to just be with ourselves. Right.

[00:47:50] Dr. Nasha Winters: Well, when we started this whole conversation about one of the key roles of the mitochondria is being a receiver of information. And when you think about what type of [00:48:00] information we are exposed to today versus our parents, our grandparents, our great grandparents, we have so much more input than ever, ever in human existence, and it is overwhelming our mitochondria.

[00:48:16] Dr. Nasha Winters: And so when you bring a tool like this, you literally diminish the input. And allow the translation to start to work properly again, and then allow new signaling pathways to spark and to do their thing. It's so, it's so powerful. Like it's just incredible to me. And so under appreciated.

[00:48:40] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Yeah. I love that description of the mitochondria. Exactly right, what you said. So. One, I wanna switch topics and ask you about, you know, you have this vision for a fully integrated oncology hospital. And I don't, I don't know if you and I talked about this, but like

[00:48:57] Dr. Katie Deming MD: my, in addition to being a radiation [00:49:00] oncologist, my role in cancer care was really running end-to-end cancer care for very large healthcare organization.

[00:49:06] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And my last thing that I was nominated for right before I had my shared death experience was to become national medical director for all of cancer care for one of the largest healthcare organizations. And so I love thinking about things globally and what, you know, can be with care. So I'm so curious when I saw this, you know, vision that you have.

[00:49:26] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Tell I, I, I'm, I'm so curious. Please tell us what is that about?

[00:49:29] Dr. Nasha Winters: Well, funny, about maybe a year and a half, two years into my process, in the midst of a fasting moment, um, I started having what I could best describe as downloads. You know, they, they were dreams, but they were in waking states dreams. And I started just feverishly writing these things down because what I was seeking didn't exist then.

[00:49:50] Dr. Nasha Winters: Right. And, and frankly. To this day doesn't quite exist. I mean, there's elements of it more than ever before, which is super cool, but the whole package [00:50:00] doesn't really exist. A lot of people say it does or think they have what it is, but it doesn't. And so what this looks like is a, a 150 bed residential inpatient, um, integrative oncology center and research institute on a 1200 acre organic regenerative farm among a sort of an intentional community of helping show people how to live in accordance with the nature around them and within them in a very different environment than what we have now been given, like we've normalized.

[00:50:31] Dr. Nasha Winters: What we are exposed to today in such a way that our cells are inside going, uh uh, no, wait a minute. This isn't normal. And they're rebelling. Right? And that's why we're seeing more and more of these chronic conditions, including cancer and so helping people when, when a doctor often would say to a patient, you need eat better in exercise, well, they don't really tell them or show them what that looks like and they don't tend to personalize it, and they don't tend to really like then evaluate.

[00:50:56] Dr. Nasha Winters: Like we used to have home visits. You know, [00:51:00] clinicians not too long ago used to do the home care. So they'd see what's happening in somebody's environment. They would feel what's happening in their relationships. They would walk in and smell if they smoked or if they used, you know, today you'd smell like fragrances and all the things.

[00:51:14] Dr. Nasha Winters: You actually got a sense of what people were exposed to and living in on those times. We are so far removed from that, that a patient can show up and tell you exactly what they think you want to hear, and you don't get to really be with them and meet them where they are. And so the other thing is when you wanted to seek something alternative or out of the sandbox, the standard of care, you had to go to great lengths typically far away from your home to find those things.

[00:51:41] Dr. Nasha Winters: And you also had to use resources that you typically didn't have, and you'd have to like, you know, Rob Peter to pay Paul to get to those things. And then you also create this polarity of alternative versus standard of care, and that you could never see those two come together. And so even now, I think we're up to 88 big [00:52:00] integrative, you know, big, academic institutions in the United States claiming to have an integrative oncology department.

[00:52:05] Dr. Nasha Winters: I honestly feel like most of those are just like a repurposed broom closet with like a little sign on the door that says integrated medicine department. And then you still have to like, go through a maze to find it and you still have to pay out of pocket. And it's totally siloed. And it's not truly integrative, right?

[00:52:21] Dr. Nasha Winters: Or you have the alternative clinics in different parts of the world that will completely shun anything, a standard of care. You know, and they may say they're doing all kinds of really cool testing, but maybe, maybe they're not, maybe they're not using metrics that are actually third party validated, you know, and, and, uh, able to weave it all together.

[00:52:39] Dr. Nasha Winters: So I always imagine this place where everything is there. You have your blood draws, you have your imaging, you have your, your, you know, proton load low, you know, fractionated radiation, but it's partnered with you go and oxygenate before you come in so you can potentiate the therapy and you load that patient up on being in, um, maybe some exogenous ketones and high dose melatonin to radios, [00:53:00] sensitize those cells.

[00:53:01] Dr. Nasha Winters: Can you imagine walking, like, doing all that right there and going right into your radiation treatment like that? It's really hard to find that.

[00:53:07] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Yes.

[00:53:08] Dr. Nasha Winters: Right. Um, or the same being like, okay, I wanna do my, I wanna do chemotherapy, but I want it to be based on my personalized testing and I wanna do it at a metronomic dose that is not insulin potentiated because there are people doing metronomic, but it's still paired with something that we've unfortunately, um, still use despite the evidence suggesting that that's probably not a really good idea.

[00:53:28] Dr. Nasha Winters: We've learned, we didn't know about insulin. An insulin growth factor. When we use this tool, we can certainly push cancer back with that, but we can't keep it back with that therapy. And so we can actually potentiate metronomic chemotherapy being in a fasted state and with beta hydroxybutyrate, those are really powerful tools to be in a same environment as well.

[00:53:48] Dr. Nasha Winters: So the future of oncology is no longer choosing either or. It's absolutely an and and it's absolutely integrated and it's absolutely in an environment that is [00:54:00] just as healing as the tools themselves where you have access to, like the patients are in the, on the fields with the farmers, and the farmers are in the kitchens with the chefs and the doctors and all, or in all the places together to know how to truly cultivate and create health versus just fight disease.

[00:54:18] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Yeah. No, I, I mean absolutely I love it and I think that that's, that for me, that's the sad part actually about like having been so firmly in the system and then leaving the system and then realizing there really is this chasm

[00:54:34] Dr. Katie Deming MD: between, and it's funny, even with my old colleagues, like. There. It is funny, I ran into like a group of male surgeons.

[00:54:42] Dr. Katie Deming MD: So it was like, you know, plastic surgeon, a surgical oncologist, a colorectal surgeon, a GI doctor, endoscopist, and they all used to actually report to me through, you know, the cancer leadership. So these are people that I have like really respectful relationships. Right. But it's funny because I ran into them [00:55:00] like six months.

[00:55:00] Dr. Katie Deming MD: They were going on some like guys trip to Arizona or something. I ran into the airport and I remember like being there and talking to 'em. They're like, so what's new? Like, what are you doing? And I was like, water fasting. It's incredible. I'm like, did you know that you could make tumors go away with.

[00:55:16] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Fasting with water, and I just remember and they're so sweet, right? And these are people who like I have a respectful relationship with, but I just remember them looking at me, but like, oh wow. Like she's really lost it. She is off the reservation now. And I just remember leaving that and being like, okay, wow.

[00:55:34] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Like everybody's not ready for this, but. I do like, I do think we are ready for this in so many ways. Like people are asking, like demanding it, right? Like patients are saying, I'm not gonna just do this route. And then, and also, you know, I love that Walter v Volter longo's the data around the fasting mimicking diets.

[00:55:56] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Even though like with the eating, you know, it doesn't match up the fasting and the concepts and [00:56:00] also the data, you know, because now it's easier to have conversations with medical oncologists, say, well, there is data around fasting, around chemo. And I think though, this idea of having some place where you can really do these therapies not in a 'cause there are, you know, I see a lot of non oncologists

[00:56:20] Dr. Katie Deming MD: giving chemotherapy in these low dose and insulin potentiated.

[00:56:25] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And, and to be honest, I, and I don't like there is, It is dangerous. Like this is a dangerous world. And so if you could have people who were trained in oncology and really understand this, working alongside with the people who get the integrative component, rather than being like, well, all bad chemotherapy is bad, so I'm gonna take this person who's never trained in oncology and now they're just gonna give low dose chemotherapy, and somehow that's better. You know, to me it's, it's very dangerous. And so what you're describing is leveraging the [00:57:00] expertise of the people who have trained within the different systems and bringing them together so that we can all speak the same language and collaborate to create something truly new,

[00:57:10] Dr. Katie Deming MD: which.

[00:57:10] Dr. Nasha Winters: right.

[00:57:11] Dr. Katie Deming MD: What we have right now is an old system that's fragmented and then everyone doing their best outside of it.

[00:57:18] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And like you described, like there are a lot of these centers, like I described them as like Disneyland for cancer, where you can go and you can do, I mean you could spend a hundred thousand dollars like that and like do all these things that I'm like, but I don't know actually what the data is

[00:57:33] Dr. Katie Deming MD: to support all of this.

[00:57:34] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Right? So to have something where people can go and they have access to that. And then also knowing that it's founded in science

[00:57:42] Dr. Katie Deming MD: and, you know, evidence. I, I really, really love that and I hope that that's like, is that on the horizon? Is that,

[00:57:49] Dr. Nasha Winters: The land has been donated, the proformas have been created, the architectural renderings are done. We're just in, we've then we've put our energy in focusing on educating, clinicians, [00:58:00] um, and patients, you know, at, um, allied health professionals and patient advocates. 'cause you gotta have people work in, at that hospital.

[00:58:06] Dr. Nasha Winters: Um, and we've created a data platform that's about to go live to actually collect these metrics and show that we do have different outcomes than just standard of care or just alternative care to show that that integration is truly, truly integral to changing the, the conversation. And so having all of those now in place, we're now ready to go out to the capital, you know, and, you know, to ask for the capital campaign of here's the $250 million it's going to cost to build this 250,000 square foot, 150 bed hospital and research institute.

[00:58:36] Dr. Nasha Winters: And so that seems like a lot of money to some people. But when you look at, say, a remodel of just one wing at MD Anderson costs that much. This is building an entire new model. Not a, not a, not a fresh coat of paint, you know, on a broken system. And so that's where we get very excited. And even in my training programs, I always thought that people more like naturopaths and alternative doctors would be interested in taking my [00:59:00] program.

[00:59:00] Dr. Nasha Winters: 70% of our students are from standard of care, and out of that 70% we have a growing number. I would say probably upwards of 10% of that are now standard of care oncologists, you know, surgical oncologists, radiation oncologists, medical oncologists who say. Enough. What I'm doing is not enough. I have to do something different.

[00:59:21] Dr. Nasha Winters: And it's not to say what they were doing was wrong. It can just be done differently and better. Just like with the alternative folks saying, well, I'm not going to, you know, spend that money on this type of treatment or this type of testing or this type of evaluation, but it's that information that tells us what's working and what's not working or where to start, and that there's some really amazing tools out there today to actually tell us very specifically, Hey, this particular chemotherapy with this particular off-label drug, with this particular national therapeutic in this timing dose duration combination is your, you know, bullseye.

[00:59:54] Dr. Nasha Winters: Like that is what we, we actually are doing that right now. Why [01:00:00] is that not standard of care

[01:00:02] Dr. Katie Deming MD: I love it. Well, I am your biggest cheerleader and just

[01:00:05] Dr. Katie Deming MD: praying that that money rolls in and it's actually, when you think about the people who are interested in seeing something like this come to life, there is that money there. So I know that that's gonna happen. And, and also you're perfectly positioned to do something like this in a way that is impactful,

[01:00:24] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Right.

[01:00:24] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Like really shifting this, the narrative and shifting

[01:00:28] Dr. Katie Deming MD: the The literature,

[01:00:30] Dr. Katie Deming MD: you know, really creating a new path. So I'm so grateful for the work that you do in the world. I'm so grateful for you taking an hour outta your time to be with me and share with my audience. And, I look forward to seeing you at your event in October.

[01:00:44] Dr. Katie Deming MD: So tell everyone about your event that's

[01:00:45] Dr. Katie Deming MD: coming up.

[01:00:46] Dr. Nasha Winters: Well, we are bringing together the best of metabolic regenerative health with regenerative agriculture and soil remediation and environmental medicine under one roof, and we have. A brilliant group of over 35 [01:01:00] speakers and panelists, including this amazing human being, Dr. Deming coming in to share their wisdom, their knowledge among, hundreds and hundreds of people both in person and virtual to help be part of the movement to change this narrative.

[01:01:13] Dr. Nasha Winters: And, so I'm very excited about that event. We've never hosted our own conference, but I can't believe the caliber of people coming forth to share their wisdom and to inspire people both in, in person and virtually. So metabolic. it's Metabolic Health Day conference. Horrible name I know. But it happens on Metabolic Health Day, which is the 10th of October, and then the day after the 11th of October, in Tucson, Arizona at Lowe's Ventana.

[01:01:37] Dr. Nasha Winters: We hope that this is the beginning of many and we look forward to seeing you all there. live or livestream you.

[01:01:44] Dr. Katie Deming MD: I love it. Well, thank you so much for being with us, and if people are interested in finding you, what, where should they go online?

[01:01:51] Dr. Nasha Winters: Start probably with just Nasha doc, dr nayha.com, D-R-N-A-S-H a.com. 'cause it'll take you to all the other things. That's a good starting point. Um, [01:02:00] like you said earlier, the video that kind of gives a little bit of my story. but that's also where you can learn about my books. You can learn about conferences, you can watch thousands of hours of podcasts and things that you can watch and download and learn from, including this beautiful conversation that you and I had recently on the Metabolic Matters podcast.

[01:02:16] Dr. Nasha Winters: Um, and you can also just join, join our newsletter to keep on top of all the things that we have going on in the way we are truly making a ripple in the world of oncology. so

[01:02:26] Dr. Katie Deming MD: I love it. Well, I can't encourage you guys more to please go and check out Dr. Nisha's work. She's doing incredible work in this space, and thank you again so much for being here.

[01:02:36] Dr. Nasha Winters: my honor, and thank you for all you do as well.

[01:02:38]