Episode 118 | What Insulin Does to Cancer and How Ketosis Changes It with Dr. Christy Kesslering, Radiation Oncologist, Metabolic Health Practitioner, and Terrain Certified

[00:00:00] Dr. Katie Deming: Hello, I'm Dr. Katie Deming, and this is the Born Heal Podcast where we explore holistic practices for cancer prevention and healing. Let's welcome Dr. Christie Kesser Ling, who is a radiation oncologist turned metabolic health practitioner to the show. Welcome, Dr. Kesslering nice to have

[00:00:17] Dr. Christy Kesslering: Thank, thanks for having me. It's great.

[00:00:19] Dr. Katie Deming: Absolutely.

[00:00:20] Dr. Katie Deming: I'm excited to talk to you. So. I met you. So for the audience, I met Dr. Kesser Ling at Metabolic Health Day conference, which was put on by Dr. [00:00:30] Nayha Winters. And as soon as I met Dr. Kesser Ling, I was like, oh, there's my kindred spirit. So Dr. Kesser Ling practiced radiation oncologist just like me for several decades before moving into a folk practice that's focused on metabolic health and using that.

[00:00:49] Dr. Katie Deming: For healing not only cancer, but other diseases as well. So I would love to have you just start by saying, you know, what led you to explore the link between metabolism [00:01:00] and cancer after decades in radiation oncology? 'cause I know you weren't hearing this in radonc, like I know that wasn't coming from your practice.

[00:01:06] Dr. Katie Deming: So how did you end up in this space?

[00:01:08] Dr. Christy Kesslering: well, yes, and, and yes. Kindred spirits for sure. Like, I was like, ah, Katie, like, we're two peas in a pod. So many things that overlapped in our lives. But, I will say that my metabolic health journey started with, it's always a personal story. I. Was always the person that, you know, struggled a little bit with my weight, going to college, put on a ton of weight, [00:01:30] you know, got it off, but then started having babies and I'm, it was right around, my, it must have been in my residency, was that when it was,early, early practice where I was like, oh gosh, is this how I'm gonna be?

[00:01:45] Dr. Christy Kesslering: I'd had two babies. I was carrying extra weight. My nurses were asking about this book called Atkins, and I'm like, oh, don't do Atkins. You'll kill your kidneys. You'll like get a heart attack. That's terrible. And, and they're like, really? It [00:02:00] didn't, the book didn't really seem like that. And I'm like, Hmm, maybe I should read the book.

[00:02:03] Dr. Christy Kesslering: So I decided to read the book and I went, oh my gosh, this guy makes so much sense. This sounds really. Interesting. It's gotta be about this insulin thing. Wait, right? So I try it myself and I'm like, this is awesome. Like, this feels great. I feel so good. and I didn't realize that, I was having, you know, mild fertility issues.

[00:02:25] Dr. Christy Kesslering: We had two children very easily. And then I have this big five year gap between kid two [00:02:30] and three. And and it was right after I started Atkins that all of a sudden I got kid three and then kid four. And, all of a sudden I'm like, okay, we, we can be done now. But, it was such an effort, effortless way to maintain my weight and I always felt good.

[00:02:44] Dr. Christy Kesslering: And anytime I kind of veered off or started to increase my carbohydrate, 'cause that's the right thing, right? We should eat lots of fruits and vegetables and whole grains. And every time I did that, I felt terrible and I'd keep going back and I'm like, I just feel better. Here. and lo and behold, right, we've learned through [00:03:00] radiation oncology that obesity is a big driver of cancer, right?

[00:03:03] Dr. Christy Kesslering: So I just said, well, it's the obesity leak. I'll link, I'll just help my cancer patients to maybe lose weight. So I would continue to counsel on eat lower carb, do this, do that, but no one would ever do it, right? And, and it wasn't until I really came across Dr. Siegfried, Dr. Winter's work, where I'm like, oh my gosh.

[00:03:25] Dr. Christy Kesslering: This isn't about obesity, this is about insulin driving cancer. And so then I [00:03:30] really dug into that literature. I spent years, just devouring everything that I could, self-teaching myself everything that I could and then bringing it to my patients. So I started, half of my radiation oncology consult was about the radiation piece and the other half was about the metabolic piece.

[00:03:47] Dr. Christy Kesslering: And I would provide data, you know, the studies that we did have in breast cancer that showed. You know, higher rates of recurrence and mortality, in those patients that had higher insulin levels, and [00:04:00] I would say. What do you think? Like, here's a meal plan, here's a diet list, here's what I want you to do.

[00:04:06] Dr. Christy Kesslering: You, you want in, you know, and a lot of 'em would do it during radiation. Some of 'em I would see before they'd even start chemo. And I'd say, if you wanna do anything, like get onboard now. And you know, they would come back and see me after their chemo was done and I'm like, who is this person? Have I met them?

[00:04:23] Dr. Christy Kesslering: You know, like they're 50 pounds down, they're feeling great, you know? and then I started doing support group. So every. [00:04:30] Month. Every one day, every month, evening, I would do a support group, which was about a 35, 40 minute presentation on whatever was in the news. There's always the grab your headlines that are telling you, don't eat eggs, eat eggs, do this, and we would go through like.

[00:04:44] Dr. Christy Kesslering: Well, what did the data show? I teach them how to understand literature and we'd always do something about cancer and metabolism, and then I'd just be there to answer questions. So I had a really nice following, and I got a lot of people excited and interested. I feel like I rubbed off on a lot of [00:05:00] people, but I also had a lot of pushback, you know, from the standard oncology dieticians, from some of the medical oncologists, even my own colleagues.

[00:05:09] Dr. Christy Kesslering: Some of them, you know, are. You know, decided to do some of these things for themselves. some wanted nothing to do with it and wanted me to have nothing to do with their patients because they just, they didn't believe it or they thought it was bad or whatever. But, the ones that, the patients that really enjoyed it, you know, like got value out of [00:05:30] it.

[00:05:30] Dr. Christy Kesslering: I, you know, when a radiation oncologist is curing somebody's diabetes, like that's, you know, just crazy. So.

[00:05:38] Dr. Katie Deming: I love it. I love it. Well, and you know, it's interesting 'cause for me, I think I came into this space, even though I'm also in the metabolic space, came about it from an emotional standpoint and I got really fascinated with the emotional stuff. And I started talking about that all with my clients or patients, I guess when I was practicing medicine and.

[00:05:59] Dr. Katie Deming: I would find [00:06:00] that some of 'em are like, why are you talking to me about this? Like what do emotions have anything to do with cancer? And they would just be like, shut off. And then some of 'em would be so interested. And actually for me, it became hard to practice in a way that felt really integral because most of the people just wanted me to irradiate them and not necessarily bring all these other things.

[00:06:21] Dr. Katie Deming: So I'm wondering, you know, now you've shifted out of radiation oncology, just like I've shifted out of radiation oncology. What was that that made you [00:06:30] shift and actually stop practicing and just focus on this full time?

[00:06:34] Dr. Christy Kesslering: So I think part of it was the fact that you are getting the patient population that's kind of bought into conventional medicine, which is the doctor can fix me. As opposed to the doctor is just treating the symptom and you, we have to get to why this occurred and what can we do to heal that terrain.

[00:06:53] Dr. Christy Kesslering: You know, the doc Naisha idea of, you know, the mental, the emotional, the physical, the, the spiritual, everything. [00:07:00] now again, I could probably stay in it a little bit longer because I was still using that medicine tool that. Here's your insulin. Let's take a blood test and look at your insulin. Let's look at your vitamin D levels.

[00:07:13] Dr. Christy Kesslering: Let's look at your metabolism. And we know that metabolism impacts cancer. You know, we would touch on the other things, the lifestyle, the mental, emotional, the so we would do that as part of my support group, but. I think that what got me, you know, [00:07:30] numerous things got me to really leave, but I had planned on leaving.

[00:07:34] Dr. Christy Kesslering: I kind of had continued to grow in this space and thinking, you know, at some point I'm gonna leave and I'm just gonna do it for the people who want this. They're gonna find, you know, they're gonna find me. And, and then the whole COVID debacle. And I'm like, oh, I think God's talking to me. Now's a good time.

[00:07:50] Dr. Christy Kesslering: So I, I left and I just started, my own practice and a lot of things happened at the same time. I was doing coursework for Dr. Westman's Adapter Life [00:08:00] Academy. I would, had, I had been in, I had done some functional medicine. Doing a lot of self-teaching online courses. Lots of CME decided to enroll in the Andrew Weil Integrative Medicine course, but I quickly realized they didn't understand metabolic health.

[00:08:16] Dr. Christy Kesslering: They were almost no different than a conventional practice, just using different tools to kind of treat the symptoms. And so I decided now that I kind of knew I was leaving, I kind of left that [00:08:30] program and I joined Nasia. She had been trying to get me to do it since the inception of her course, but it was just not something that I could really incorporate into my conventional practice.

[00:08:40] Dr. Christy Kesslering: So I was like, I don't know what's the right time. I kind of need. Degree so that the dieticians leave me alone and, you know, that kind of thing. Anyway, I, so I kind of completely 360 to what I wanted to do, and I, I left, started my online practice and it just grew organically so fast. It was [00:09:00] grew.and it, it's nice to be, you know, in this space with like-minded people.

[00:09:05] Dr. Christy Kesslering: I mean, most of the people that find me, find me because this is what they want. To do. Right now, I have the occasional person who is finding me because someone told them to see me. Right? And those people don't always work out the best. it's really the ones who say, oh, I read this. I saw this. You resonated with me.

[00:09:25] Dr. Christy Kesslering: I already started doing X or Y. what do we do next? You know.

[00:09:29] Dr. Katie Deming: [00:09:30] Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I think too, when you get outside of conventional medicine and we start talking about doing things like changing your diet or doing the emotional work or all of these other pieces that play into getting to the underlying root cause of any illness. You need to have buy-in from the person.

[00:09:51] Dr. Katie Deming: So like that is the most important thing that when people come to me and they're like, well, what are your results? And I'm like, well, tell me the person who I'm seeing, because my [00:10:00] results in doing this kind of work really depends. I'm just facilitating, helping with a plan. But the healing really comes from that person.

[00:10:10] Dr. Katie Deming: And so they have to be bought into this to the program or the concepts if, if they're gonna succeed. So I, I absolutely. You know, see that in my own practice. But you just said a couple things in there that I wanna tease out. Does it because I was confused about them before I started my practice and I know that, many of my [00:10:30] listeners may not know the difference.

[00:10:31] Dr. Katie Deming: So you mentioned functional medicine and you mentioned integrative medicine, and you have training. You did training in functional medicine it sounds like, and, but not like the formal like. Full fellowship, but basically through continuing medical education and that kind of thing. And then chose not to pursue the integrative training through, um, university of Arizona.

[00:10:53] Dr. Katie Deming: But can you describe what is the difference, like what is integrative versus functional so that people have their, you know, can wrap their head [00:11:00] around that?

[00:11:00] Dr. Christy Kesslering: The way that I feel like it's different is, again, functional medicine is really trying to look at root cause they're digging deeper into maybe, gut and toxins and my,metabolism and, and all of those pieces. So they're. And although again, no one understands ketogenic diets and metabolism anywhere quite as well as I would like them to.

[00:11:24] Dr. Christy Kesslering: whereas I feel like integrative medicine was, oh, this person has hypertension, so let's put [00:11:30] them on these herbs. Or let's, I mean, and they would try to do a little bit of lifestyle counseling and we should eat better and we should cut out the pop or the junk food. But they were still very plant-based.

[00:11:43] Dr. Christy Kesslering: Or standard American diet, you know, pyramid kind of, recommendations. But they did lots of like herbs and smoothies and this and that and you know, in place of maybe pharmaceuticals. So I just felt it was like, okay, nutraceuticals [00:12:00] are pharmaceuticals, but it's like, are we really trying to make them not need either one?

[00:12:06] Dr. Christy Kesslering: And that's right. And so that's kind of where I feel like, Really, again, functional medicine is a little bit in that space, but there are still things that I, I don't mesh with. I feel like, you know, thinking more about the, the mind body, metabolism, I, again, I'm the metabolism doc, like that's just where I wanna stay, but all things affect [00:12:30] metabolism, right?

[00:12:31] Dr. Christy Kesslering: Stress, sleep. Blue lights, you know, whatever. So, so I do think that there's a lot of lifestyle that plays into metabolism. but I feel like if we just focus on getting real single ingredient nutrient dense, mostly animal foods, we tend to stabilize our mood. We tend to wanna work out, we tend to improve our guts.

[00:12:55] Dr. Christy Kesslering: We like, there's so many things that come along with. Optimizing our [00:13:00] diet and maybe tweaking some nutritional supplements where we might have some deficiencies or gaps where we need to maybe fill that. I, I feel like you get so much bang for that buck that, and it kind of overarches into all of those other terrains.

[00:13:15] Dr. Christy Kesslering: People start sleeping better and people, you know, start interacting better. I don't know. There's just so, so it's so powerful. And again, fasting. You're, you're, you're the fasting queen. you know, what does fasting do? It puts you into ketosis. What do I tell people to do? Eat in [00:13:30] such a way that you are in a fasted mimicking state.

[00:13:32] Dr. Christy Kesslering: You are in ketosis, and we can play with diet and fasting, intermittent fasting, short-term, fast to really optimize and, and harness that deeper healing state.

[00:13:43] Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah. Perfect. Okay. And I like the way that I think about those two things is with functional medicine, and this is all like I'm learning myself as, as we step out of like we were so trained in this like very specific way of thinking and then you step outside. And for me with [00:14:00] the functional medicine is, it's a lot more testing, right?

[00:14:02] Dr. Katie Deming: It's really looking, like you said, it's digging in the root cause, but really doing a lot more testing and the integrative is more kind of. Looking at things globally and not taking such a, a laboratory focused approach. And, and personally in my practice, I think of it as an integrative practice just because it is that holistic, but a lot less of the testing than you would see in like functional medicine.

[00:14:26] Dr. Katie Deming: And I think that plays into, with your training in [00:14:30] metabolic health and terrain, through Dr. Naia winters is all very much data-driven. You know, test, don't

[00:14:36] Dr. Christy Kesslering: Yes, yes, yes.

[00:14:39] Dr. Katie Deming: Yes. So, and I, what I love about this too is I love being able to collaborate with, people. It's so funny, I'm like clinicians, I'm like, doctors, you're a doctor.

[00:14:48] Dr. Katie Deming: But it's so funny, like I, I struggle with the things, how do, what do we call our patients now? We can't call patients. We have to call 'em clients. What do we call each other? But you're

[00:14:55] Dr. Christy Kesslering: Colleagues, colleagues.

[00:14:56] Dr. Katie Deming: Colleagues. Exactly. That's it. So I, what [00:15:00] I love is, I love having colleagues that have a, a complimentary approach to what I'm doing.

[00:15:06] Dr. Katie Deming: 'cause for me, I do a lot less testing and, you know, I, for the fasting, we have some specific tests that need to be monitored while people are in there. But then I love having colleagues like you that then I can refer to, to say, okay, now you know, someone's done their fast, we've, you know, gotten this big reset and then.

[00:15:24] Dr. Katie Deming: Having colleagues that then can track and follow people long-term if they want to take this approach. [00:15:30] 'cause sometimes people come to me like, they're like, I don't know what to do and I just, I'm gonna start by fasting. And fasting creates a lot of mental clarity, a lot of emotional clearing out to get them into a really calm spa space.

[00:15:44] Dr. Katie Deming: We're also getting 'em in te ketosis, but then when they come out, they want then a plan of like, okay, how do I live? 'cause they're not gonna fast for the rest of their life, I mean. Some, some form of fasting for sure, but not prolonged fasting obviously. So one of the [00:16:00] things that I wanted to ask you about was, you know, the biomarkers that you're looking at.

[00:16:06] Dr. Katie Deming: 'cause I know that testing is a big part of your practice when you're looking at metabolic health and, and what are these drivers you're testing for that? So what are the most revealing biomarkers that you look at when you're testing for people who are healing cancer specifically?

[00:16:21] Dr. Christy Kesslering: So I tend to get a pretty broad panel because yes, I'm looking at metabolic markers and if I just wanted to stop there, [00:16:30] the, the primary metabolic markers is we're looking at fasting glucose and insulin. I'm using a calculation score called Homa IR to look at an insulin resistant score. I'm also looking at triglycerides because

[00:16:42] Dr. Christy Kesslering: triglyceride glucose index is another insulin resistance marker. And then I'm also getting HDL or, you know, quote unquote the good cholesterol. I think all cholesterol is good, by the way. I like high cholesterol. but HDL, triglyceride, HDL ratio is [00:17:00] another insulin resistance marker. It's consistent with lipoprotein insulin resistance.

[00:17:05] Dr. Christy Kesslering: So those are like my. Four blood tests, which are glucose, insulin, triglyceride, and HDL, which I can then use to kind of look at three different arms of insulin resistance. So kind of in the fat field, glucose field or the combo. but I look at other things. So then I look at, IGF one insulin-like growth factor one, which is another, growth marker for [00:17:30] cancer.

[00:17:30] Dr. Christy Kesslering: So insulin and IGF one can cross. Bind to receptors. They both have been associated with increased cancer growth. they both are also associated with insulin resistance. I do look at hemoglobin A1C, which is a three month average of glucose, but if I had to throw one out, that would be the one I would throw out because.

[00:17:50] Dr. Christy Kesslering: Glucose is not really the issue. It's more about insulin, how much insulin is required to keep that glucose down. In addition, hemoglobin A1C can be a [00:18:00] misnomer if somebody doesn't have robust blood, red blood cells. Hemoglobin A1C can look good, but it is not. And if somebody is super healthy and their red blood cells.

[00:18:12] Dr. Christy Kesslering: Or living forever. You know, they can live up to 120 days. Then their hemoglobin A1C actually looks higher even though their glucose is rock solid. So again, I get it just because if I see somebody who looks okay, but their hemoglobin A1C is six, I at least have to think about [00:18:30] what else is going on.but then I do numerous other markers.

[00:18:33] Dr. Christy Kesslering: I'm looking at Dr. Neisha's trifecta, her C-R-P-E-S-R-L-D-H, or lactate dehydrogenase. I'm looking at other inflammation markers, ferritin, fibrinogen, ceruloplasm. I look at LP little A, which is.an LDL, basically caries, oxidized LDLs. a lot of our conventional doctors will say, Hey, that's genetic.

[00:18:54] Dr. Christy Kesslering: You can't do anything about it. But I'll tell you, I walk people's LP a little laid down with them every [00:19:00] day. so it's very modifiable. We look at immune markers, so we'll get the basic C, B, C and really kind of look at nutritional markers, look at electrolytes. we'll get vitamin D, I'll get TSH, I'll get cortisol.

[00:19:14] Dr. Christy Kesslering: I'll get zinc, I'll get the iron binding panels. I, I really try to get a really broad view of what's going on from a metabolic immune nutrient status. And then. Kind [00:19:30] of decide what are the bigger players? Because some people, their first, I call it my first page, but their first page on those metabolic markers look beautiful, and then we get into inflammation markers and they look terrible.

[00:19:42] Dr. Christy Kesslering: So again, some people might have pretty decent glucose and insulin interaction, but they actually have a lot of inflammation. What could that be from? Is that more of an autoimmune, a toxic burden, something else that's creating a lot of cellular? Stress, that's [00:20:00] not necessarily glucose. Now, it could be because I will say that some people, especially our younger population, so they haven't lived in this world of swinging blood sugars, you know, for decades.

[00:20:13] Dr. Christy Kesslering: They might have only 10 years or 20 years, and, and so their fasting numbers look really good. But if you put a continuous glucose monitor on 'em, they don't look so good. And, and oftentimes I won't, I don't use a continuous glucose monitor in [00:20:30] everybody, but sometimes I will if we're trying to figure it out.

[00:20:32] Dr. Christy Kesslering: But usually you can tell by symptoms, you know, they're the people that get anxious in between meals. They can't skip a meal, they need a snack, they. They've got some mental emotional instability. you know, they get hangry and those are people who, you know, they're on that rollercoaster. They just haven't been in that state long enough to get that fasted insulin level up.

[00:20:52] Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah, so it's super helpful I think to, 'cause this is the piece, you know, that people. Come to me and that they're [00:21:00] missing when they're seeing their conventional providers and they're like, how do I even understand what's happening underneath? And I think these biomarkers that you're testing for, allow them to see, okay, these are the, the inflammatory markers.

[00:21:13] Dr. Katie Deming: This is what's going on underneath, even if things kind of look good on the surface. Um, so thank you for explaining all of that. And I'm wondering, if you can talk about. Ketogenic diet and outcomes with cancer, because actually, this is something [00:21:30] I haven't talked much about on my podcast. I did have Dr.

[00:21:33] Dr. Katie Deming: Hans Kim, who's a radiation oncologist, who uses ketogenic diet for people who are having radiation, which is amazing. I love that, that Dr. Hans is doing that. But I'm wondering, can you talk about. What are the, the, for people who are doing some conventional therapy, how can they use these approaches during either chemotherapy or radiation to help them reduce the side effects associated with treatment and get [00:22:00] better results?

[00:22:01] Dr. Katie Deming: Can you speak to that piece?

[00:22:02] Dr. Christy Kesslering: So. There definitely is data. It's just somewhat limited. There is a lot of mouse data. There certainly are some people data. and, but what we know from science, from, from prior studies is that, now they used to do calorie restriction to put people into kind of a ketogenic space. So that was kind of the older ke.

[00:22:27] Dr. Christy Kesslering: Medical oncology, you know, kind of [00:22:30] processes because calorie restriction will put people into ketosis. and what it showed was that you kind of are slowing down the propagation of your normal cells. So when you're giving this chemotherapy or other treatment, you know, you're, those normal cells are not, dividing as rapidly, so they are not getting the hit from that toxic therapy, whereas the cancer cells.

[00:22:53] Dr. Christy Kesslering: they, they might actually be a little more stressed because they feed off of that sugar and if you kind of move down that [00:23:00] path and you're not giving them as much food, they're a little more sensitive to the therapy. So there is a number of, I, I like looking at some of the mouse data because it's really quite interesting now.

[00:23:10] Dr. Christy Kesslering: It, it, mice are not people. They get into ketosis in different ways, and many of the studies aren't true like ketogenic diet forever. They might fast them for two or three days, so they get them into a ketogenic state, and, but they only do that every few days, as opposed to being in a continuous ketogenic state.

[00:23:29] Dr. Christy Kesslering: [00:23:30] but what it seems to show is that ketogenic diets very often do almost as well. As the agent, whether it's a hormonal therapy, API three K inhibitor, a like whatever kind of drug that you're using. But the beauty seems to be when you combine the two and when you add a ketogenic diet to the therapy, it seems like it is heads and shoulders above anything.

[00:23:56] Dr. Christy Kesslering: Like it's, you know, one plus one equals four. [00:24:00] It's, it's, they're just not additive. It's really dramatic and, and, um There've been a handful of,human studies, randomized or just, you know, case series. But, the two fasting trials. Looking at toxicity. So there was one randomized trial in, gynecologic malignancies where they did water fasting for 48 hours around the chemotherapy.

[00:24:22] Dr. Christy Kesslering: And those women had far less dose reductions, less hospitalizations. They tolerated the, the treatment much better. [00:24:30] Whereas in the other one it was, more of the fasting mimicking diet, which is a severe calorie restricted diet. does put people into ketosis and they would do it five day, three to five days around.

[00:24:41] Dr. Christy Kesslering: Each chemotherapy cycle, which was typically every three weeks. and they did, the people that were following, or the women that were on the, ketogenic diet, cyclical ketogenic diet, did not take any steroid medicine and steroid medicines or often given with chemos to prevent [00:25:00] side effects. But what do steroids do?

[00:25:01] Dr. Christy Kesslering: They also raise your blood sugar. and the women that were doing the fasting without. Steroid did as well or better than the group that was getting the steroid and the standard of care. so I think that we have, you know, some decent data and if you talk to anybody who fasts around chemo and also hasn't fasted around chemo, they'll tell you they do much better when they're fasting around chemo.

[00:25:25] Dr. Christy Kesslering: Um, and I will use, sometimes there are some people who. [00:25:30] Either, you know, they just don't feel well. They feel like they need to put a little something in their stomach, but based on, you know, the, the Volter Longo Fasting Mimicking Diet, we might do very calorie restricted, high fat diet just to get them through.

[00:25:44] Dr. Christy Kesslering: If they're not feeling that well, I tell everybody to listen to their body, but most people fast around it and no problem. Sure I can do that. Not a problem. Feels good. I'm great. I'm out golfing the next day, you know, whatever. and then again, with the. Augmenting of therapy. That's where I [00:26:00] think, you know, I, it's like you almost wanna shake the conventional doctors, like, why aren't more of you doing this?

[00:26:06] Dr. Christy Kesslering: Like, it just seems so powerful. And yet most of the time, and maybe it's not most of the time anymore, it used to be that most of the time their doctors were telling them, don't do that. You're gonna hurt yourself. We don't want you to lose weight. We don't want, you know, whatever it was. That some reason for you shouldn't do that, or you shouldn't even fast.

[00:26:27] Dr. Christy Kesslering: Like, and half the time I just say, don't tell [00:26:30] 'em you're not, you're fasting. You know, like, come on, you're whatever. Or if sometimes they're concerned, I have lost some weight, what should I tell them? Just tell them you cut out junk food. They're eating healthier, you're eating real food. That's what you're doing.

[00:26:45] Dr. Christy Kesslering: So it, it's hard, but I do feel like nowadays people are coming back to me going, oh, my doctor wanted your information to give to another patient. Wow.

[00:26:56] Dr. Katie Deming: I love it. I love that. Yeah. So, well, and [00:27:00] let me ask you this. So for chemo, you know, and one thing that I've found that's. You know, makes it a little bit more complicated is now the regimens are so varied, right? Used to be like chemo was every 28 days, or dose stents would be every 14 days. And now these regimens are like day one and day eight and day 21, or you know, whatever

[00:27:18] Dr. Christy Kesslering: Or daily? Uh

[00:27:20] Dr. Katie Deming: Well in the daily, obviously you're not gonna fast daily. so, you know, I think that's one of the things that for me is like people, you know, they hear the data and then they're like, oh, but [00:27:30] that's like, it, it very much lines up with old standard chemotherapy dosing, which it no longer happens that way.

[00:27:38] Dr. Katie Deming: but the one, the question that I wanted to ask you is like, as a starting point, say it will and two. Things. Actually the first thing you brought up about the steroids is a huge one. And that's one of the things where if I have someone who's gonna fast around chemo, I say, go to your doctor and just ask 'em what is the absolute lowest dose of the steroid they can give you.

[00:27:57] Dr. Katie Deming: And then if you do, well just ask them to [00:28:00] bring it down and down to see if you can stop it. 'cause most oncologists, I think, are really resistant to not using it 'cause they don't wanna have, an allergic reaction or anaphylactic reaction to the chemotherapy. But that lowering of the. The steroid. I mean, let alone that it's just not good from a metabolic standpoint and not good for their cancer and all of that.

[00:28:19] Dr. Katie Deming: They just feel so much better when you dial down the steroid and get it out if you can. Right. I mean, nobody feels good on steroids. So that was the first point that I just wanted to [00:28:30] make that, that. That for people who are fasting around chemo, really talking to your doctors to ask what is the absolute lowest dose of the steroid that I can take and see if you can get actually off of it while you're, if you're fasting with chemo.

[00:28:43] Dr. Katie Deming: 'cause that is would be very powerful if you could do nothing else. That would be

[00:28:47] Dr. Christy Kesslering: Agree. Agree. And there's, to be honest, there's usually multiple medicines that are negotiable around chemotherapy. So.

[00:28:56] Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah, so do you wanna speak to

[00:28:58] Dr. Christy Kesslering: Well, it's just like, okay, here's [00:29:00] the anti-nausea medicine and the this medicine, and you know, and, and I say, you know, like, let's take as few things as possible if you need them. Absolutely.

[00:29:09] Dr. Christy Kesslering: But let's not just take them prophylactically, you know?

[00:29:13] Dr. Katie Deming: Absolutely. So let me ask you this, you know, based on that, the data you, you know, you talked about the 48 hours and then there's the fasting mimicking. If you have someone who's coming in and they're gonna start chemotherapy, let's just say it's like a standard, you know, chemotherapy [00:29:30] that's given every two weeks or every three weeks, would you have someone you know, start with like a 48 hour fasting around the chemotherapy?

[00:29:40] Dr. Katie Deming: Or would Yes. You would?

[00:29:42] Dr. Christy Kesslering: So usually if it's every three weeks, I'll do 72 hours. if it's every two weeks, I'll do 48 hours. If it's every week, you know, maybe we split, we start with a breakfast and then we don't eat the rest of the day. We don't eat. Maybe we do a [00:30:00] dinner. So we're really. Doing more like a 30, 36 hour. it depends on the person, right?

[00:30:05] Dr. Christy Kesslering: Because some people could do a 48 hour every week and not a big deal. I'll even have some people do longer ones. I've got a, a guy that's gonna go SBRT to his lung, so focused radiation to the lung tumor, and it's gonna be a four day regimen. They told him he was gonna go four consecutive days. I'm like that the whole week.

[00:30:23] Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah.

[00:30:25] Dr. Christy Kesslering: So, and he's like, all right, no problem. You know? So

[00:30:29] Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah, no, [00:30:30] exactly. Well, and that's a, sorry, I have a new kitten. This is EEO. He is definitely trouble and he is making his way. so no, that's super helpful for people and that's my, my general is pe If people can fast 72 hours, that's what I will have them do. But then it, it often ends up being like.

[00:30:46] Dr. Katie Deming: You are modifying based on what is the regimen that they're taking and how well do they do with fasting and, and all of the things that you said. But I'm gonna go here because you brought it up, the fasting mimicking

[00:30:57] Dr. Christy Kesslering: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:58] Dr. Katie Deming: So tell me, I [00:31:00] have thoughts, so I'll share my thoughts too if you share your thoughts first.

[00:31:02] Dr. Katie Deming: So. What are your thoughts around the fasting mimicing diet and specifically I'm talking about like the, the, the packets, like, you know what I'm saying? That you can buy this pre-packaged food to do this. This is what a lot of people I see, you know, they come to me and they're like, oh, I've done this, or whatever.

[00:31:17] Dr. Katie Deming: I'm just wondering what your thoughts are.

[00:31:19] Dr. Christy Kesslering: My, my. My bias is somehow he hijacked that name because a ketogenic diet is the original fasting mimicking diet, and that is, you [00:31:30] know, started over a hundred years ago to help kids with seizures. so a ketogenic diet is a fasting mimicking diet. Now, the one that Dr. Longo, sells, you know, it, it is a.

[00:31:43] Dr. Christy Kesslering: Again, severe calorie restricted ketogenic diet. So he's not using a true ketogenic diet in the sense of a high fat, low carbohydrate diet because he's got carbohydrates. I don't like the packages. I don't like the ingredients. I think they're actually [00:32:00] quite toxic ingredients. I would never, ever, I tell people if it has a label, don't eat it.

[00:32:05] Dr. Christy Kesslering: So, so I do tell some people, if you'd like to follow that regimen. Well, let's just eat a 500 calorie ketogenic diet on those days as opposed to drinking some toxic soup. That's kind of what I think it is,

[00:32:20] Dr. Katie Deming: I love it. So that is exactly what I say my biggest beef is. I'm like, how can we begin? Like, why would we think that giving [00:32:30] packaged food in any form would be the solution? But you're absolutely right. And that's what I say to people as I, if you want to do that, then just do 500 calories, have it, you know.

[00:32:44] Dr. Katie Deming: Get you into ketosis, you know, so let's make sure that there's enough fat in there and the carbohydrates are low enough and protein as well that we can, and mainly I feel like this ends up being mostly fat and very little protein and like just a little bit of carbohydrate if anything. But, Absolutely those, [00:33:00] those are my primary concerns was that it's packaged food, which we know is problematic and it, the ingredients are not good. And then it's, you know, you can do the same thing with real food. So why not just use, and also there's somehow there's been this tie in that fasting mimicking diet is that plant-based is the only way.

[00:33:18] Dr. Katie Deming: And it's like, no, you,

[00:33:19] Dr. Christy Kesslering: I think that's I, but I think that's the issue. If you are following a plant-based diet, you very likely are not in ketosis, and so you have to do this [00:33:30] intermittent calorie restriction to get in periods of fasting. The problem with that is that your fasting and then your refeeds. Less than optimal.

[00:33:40] Dr. Christy Kesslering: And so I really think you run people into the ground from a nutrient standpoint. And I see people, when I look at all these big labs, you know, like, I'm like, well, this is often, this is often this is, and I think you're undernourished. but, but some of my other tricks for quote unquote fasting mimicking diets, but just [00:34:00] higher.

[00:34:00] Dr. Christy Kesslering: Like I will have people do fat fasts, eat 2000 calories of just fat today. You can get ketones really far up. Dr. B's sardine fast, really jack up, you know, ketones. So I just think it's really about eating fat, moderating protein, or really cranking protein down temporarily and, and not eating carbs, period.

[00:34:23] Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well, and I've done the sardine fast. I did like a three day sardine fast, [00:34:30] and I, I can't eat sardines now, so.

[00:34:32] Dr. Katie Deming: Well, most people don't wanna eat 'em in the first place. No, exactly. But sardines are amazing actually. But I think I ruined sardines for myself by

[00:34:41] Dr. Christy Kesslering: you'll take a break. You'll get

[00:34:42] Dr. Katie Deming: how to do it. Yeah. but they, yes, so, okay. No, that, that's really helpful. And so with the, with chemotherapy, talked about fasting around chemotherapy, talked about, you know, fasting mimicking diets, basically doing ketogenic diet and calorie restriction.

[00:34:58] Dr. Katie Deming: How about with radiation? Would you [00:35:00] recommend, like you just described actually, with the SBRT doing radiation. But I'm wondering if someone's doing conventional radiation, you know, daily treatment, what would you recommend for that?

[00:35:10] Dr. Christy Kesslering: well. I will do what I tell them every day. Follow a ketogenic diet and be in ketosis. And if we wanted to either significantly up the fat during that time, do we wanna ratchet down the calories during that time? we can kind of play around with it, but the bottom line is just. Follow a ketogenic diet.

[00:35:29] Dr. Christy Kesslering: I mean, it's the same thing [00:35:30] I recommend for everybody every day. And then we might tweak it a little based on what their regimen is. So again, we're getting into more hypofractionated or shorter courses of radiation. So we might have a one day bone met, we might have a five day breast treatment. We might have a, you know, four day lung tumor treatment.

[00:35:48] Dr. Christy Kesslering: We might have a one day brain treatment. So there's a lot of these shorter courses that we can really push on the actual fasting piece. and then for the longer courses, I just say follow a [00:36:00] ketogenic diet and maybe play in with some intermittent fasting. So maybe if your treatment is at eight in the morning, you know, have an early dinner.

[00:36:08] Dr. Christy Kesslering: Don't eat anything until after your treatment. You know, maybe then you restart at lunch or, or dinner. you could easily do, you know, one meal a day or two meals a day in a tighter window. Again, it depends on the person, because there are some people who I, I, I need them to eat three meals a day. They're malnourished, you know?

[00:36:26] Dr. Christy Kesslering: but can we do that in a tighter window? Yeah.

[00:36:29] Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah. [00:36:30] Okay, perfect. So that is very helpful I think for people, you know, when they're thinking about these different therapies, like what are the levers that they can pull? So. You, you mentioned before about carnivore, so you are, let's talk about that. Like, 'cause I think this is one thing, and actually Dr.

[00:36:49] Dr. Katie Deming: Professor Siegfried answered this question on my last podcast about, you know, he. A lot of people get afraid. They're like, well, red meat has glutamine in it. But he actually answered that where [00:37:00] he said, you're so saturated with glutamine. There's no way you're gonna impact your glutamine with what you're eating.

[00:37:05] Dr. Katie Deming: It's the, that's why those medicines are used to like, you know, the press pulse is to, to bring that down. But can you talk a little bit about the carnivore diet and why you're a fan of the carnivore diet and that it's not that everyone needs to do that, but there are principles around that that can be really beneficial for healing from a metabolic standpoint.

[00:37:23] Dr. Christy Kesslering: I like to say carnivore or carnivore ish. So if you wanted to, you know, like I still bring in a little avocado now and [00:37:30] again, or olives or you know, whatever. So I'm not pure, have I done strict carnivore? For sure. But one of the things I wanna start with is that not all carnivore diets are ketogenic and that gets lost.

[00:37:42] Dr. Christy Kesslering: A lot of people just say, just eat carnivore and you'll be in keto. And that is not true because if you're eating. Six ribeyes a day. Your protein is very high. You don't, so what, I like to call it, and it's sad because we don't quite all have the [00:38:00] same nomenclature out there, but I will say, you should follow a ketogenic carnivore diet.

[00:38:05] Dr. Christy Kesslering: And the only reason I say that is some people are like, I just don't wanna count carbs. I don't wanna measure my broccoli. I don't. Or some people are like, I hate vegetables. Do I have to eat vegetables? No, you do not. but what about all those vitamins and minerals and vegetables? Well, most of those are in plant forms.

[00:38:22] Dr. Christy Kesslering: There's really far more nutrient density in our eggs and our meat and our fish. so we get a far [00:38:30] better nutrient profile for us as animals when we eat animals. I also, even though there's a lot of discussion out there, whether oxalate issues exist. I have a number of clients that find me because they do have some oxalate issues, and oxalates are just, a plant toxin.

[00:38:48] Dr. Christy Kesslering: It's something that's in a plant to help protect them from predators and if we we're big, so we don't notice it right away, but we can kind of build it up and it may become a problem. And very interestingly, if you have a [00:39:00] candida, like a can overgrowth maybe in your gut or something, you actually make more oxalate.

[00:39:05] Dr. Christy Kesslering: In your, in your body, so you endogenously are inside the body, make more oxalate. But there was an interesting breast study that they biopsied the breast tumor and the breast tumor had seven times the amount of oxalates in the breast tissue next to it. There's also some links in a prostate cancer study, and there's actually quite a few.

[00:39:24] Dr. Christy Kesslering: In the Japanese literature as far as coronary artery calcifications, because guess what? How do we [00:39:30] try to get rid of oxalates? We bind them to calcium. That's why we get calcium oxalate stones. And one of the, reasons that I think sometimes these low carb ketogenic diets get say, oh yeah, they cause kidney stones.

[00:39:42] Dr. Christy Kesslering: Well, they don't unless you're just downing. Spinach and almonds and dark chocolate and blackberries, which are all low carb foods that a lot of ketogenic dieters eat. But guess what? You can end up with kidney stones and Yay. I was one. so anyway, [00:40:00] um, I think that, when I, look at, okay, these plants are high in oxalates, these plants are high in lectins.

[00:40:08] Dr. Christy Kesslering: That's another plant toxin that can cause some autoimmune issues, joint issues, et cetera. so there's all these little plant toxins that some people tolerate great, and some people do not. And sometimes it's hard to say, okay, now which ones can I eat and which ones can't I eat? And how many can I have?

[00:40:26] Dr. Christy Kesslering: And the, and so sometimes it's easier like just eat beef, [00:40:30] bacon, eggs, butter, fish, more fat, more fat, more fat.and I think one of the things that is hard. Or one of the reasons why keto sometimes is easier in that you can make mashed cauliflower and load it with butter. You can make a salad and douse it in olive oil.

[00:40:49] Dr. Christy Kesslering: You know, you can kind of, you have, I always say that plants are just a good conduit for fat. whereas. Protein. Now what are we gonna do? And some people will eat every [00:41:00] protein like they're eating lobster. Here's my melted cup of butter, and I'm dipping every bite in my butter, or I'm making some kind of sauce.

[00:41:08] Dr. Christy Kesslering: You think of French cooking, all these rich, creamy sauces that, you know, it's like more sauce than meat. so I, I, I like carnivore in that. I think it just simplifies. The shopping, the cooking, the eating, the cleaning up the leftovers. Like, like you don't throw anything away. I find that for some people [00:41:30] it just, it, it's amazing.

[00:41:33] Dr. Christy Kesslering: and then there's others who really like, Ugh, I don't wanna eat that much pr I don't wanna eat that much meat. I'd rather bring in more vegetables. That's fine. Like, let's see what happens. And so I always, I, I never dictate, I have some people like, I'm gonna do plant-based, and I'm like, really? We just really improved your insulin.

[00:41:50] Dr. Christy Kesslering: Yeah, but this is not going the way I wanted it to. I'm like, okay, so let's try it and then come back and let's do labs again. Oh yeah, I need to get back to keto. I need to [00:42:00] get back to eating more fat. You know, whatever. So again, that, that's one of the reasons that I really like to do labs because it, you know, they just don't lie.

[00:42:10] Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah. Well, and you know, I think that the point about what you're describing is like therapeutic ketosis. Like, you know, just because I have people who come to me and they're like, oh, I'm doing a ketogenic diet. I'm like, okay, tell me what you eat. And then I'm like, I'm listening to what they're eating.

[00:42:27] Dr. Katie Deming: I'm like, there's no way you're in any level of ketosis, [00:42:30] which what with what you're eating. And also, you know, the protein. People don't realize that if you eat excess protein that turns to glucose. Right? And so there's this balance. So what you're saying is that you can use, you know, eating mostly carnivore or purely carnivore to get yourself into nutritional ketosis, but you have to be paying attention to those pieces.

[00:42:55] Dr. Katie Deming: And, and I love that you brought up e lectins and oxalates because in [00:43:00] my, you know. In my fasting program, obviously nobody's eating any lectins or oxalates during the fasting, but, we've developed our refeeding to be low oxalate, a low lectin, and then the food guide that I have people follow for at least six to eight weeks after the fast is.

[00:43:17] Dr. Katie Deming: Eliminates lectins and oxalates so that we can just reduce inflammation in the body while we're repopulating the microbiome and all of that. So, I think it's really important. I think if people are healing something, there [00:43:30] are toxins in vegetables that they have to understand and there are ways that you can get around it, right?

[00:43:34] Dr. Katie Deming: So there are, you know, cooking actually spinach, you can remove like a lot of the oxalates by doing that. So there are things that. Tricks that you can do. But, these are inflammatory things that if people don't know and they're eating a lot of it 'cause they think it's healthy 'cause it's a plant, but yet it's creating these, you know, oxalate crystals inside them or, you know, the, it's basically like fiberglass.

[00:43:54] Dr. Katie Deming: If you guys want to think about this, what is oxalate? Oxalates are like little shards of fiberglass that you're [00:44:00] ingesting into your body. Like Dr. Kesling said is that a little bit is okay, but once you start getting significant amounts of this, it can cause a lot of inflammation in the body. so thank you for explaining all of that.

[00:44:14] Dr. Katie Deming: And then the, what I wanted to ask about was with, Ketogenic diet, and this is what I love about this conversation is I'm asking you the questions that IAC have that I, you know, that I look at and I'm like, okay, what does she think about this? Like, what is her [00:44:30] experience? One of the things that I see is.

[00:44:34] Dr. Katie Deming: Staying in high levels of ketosis, so nutritional or therapeutic ketosis, you know, defining that as like a GKI less than two, or glucose, you know, less than 65 ketones above four, which is, you know, what some of the standards are, and maybe you could disagree with that. You tell me if those are the standards that you would use, but.

[00:44:53] Dr. Katie Deming: The people's bodies don't want to stay in that level consistently for a long time. That I [00:45:00] find that if people stay with doing just a ketogenic diet in those levels, that oftentimes then they can have trouble getting their ketones up. And I'm just wondering what your thoughts are about that, about being consistently in high levels of ketosis like that, whether you do cycling.

[00:45:16] Dr. Katie Deming: I'm just kinda curious about that.

[00:45:18] Dr. Christy Kesslering: So I will say that I think that the data. Doesn't yet support any specific level of ketosis. We talk about it as if it does, but I cannot find [00:45:30] any data that says there is a specific level of ketosis. And if you look in, if you listen to some of the docs that work with folks, they will see healing at levels of ketones of 1.5 and two, and gki of four.

[00:45:45] Dr. Christy Kesslering: And so I, I usually, and, and one of the things is. Guess what? I can drink soybean oil and make my ketones shoot through the roof because I'm in ketosis and, and oxidative priority suggests that I should burn [00:46:00] PUFAs first. And probably one of the reasons this sardine fast gets you high ketones. But,I don't think drinking soybean oil is beneficial and I would say no one should do that.

[00:46:10] Dr. Christy Kesslering: now I guess unless you were an Alzheimer's patient, you really just wanted the high ketones and, you know, it didn't matter the rest of your body, you're just trying to fix your brain, maybe that would be helpful. I don't know. But my bias is that we don't know. Dr. Siegfried is wonderful. He is also works with rats, you [00:46:30] know, in my rodents and, and so a lot of his GKI and, and levels.

[00:46:36] Dr. Christy Kesslering: are coming from that mouse data. And I don't know that it also applies to people. if you talk to other of the coaches that I work with, they'll see healing at lower levels. I usually only get into those deeper levels if I'm fasting, I don't push myself to do that. You know, there might be times where I'm lower or higher.

[00:46:54] Dr. Christy Kesslering: So I just say really any level of ketosis is good, and probably we should be more [00:47:00] than 0.5. We shouldn't just be in a generic, normal nutritional ketosis. I eat this way all the time, but am I always in that same state? No, because, okay. I stayed up a little too late last night. I wake up in the morning, my numbers don't look as good.

[00:47:15] Dr. Christy Kesslering: Okay? I, I didn't eat enough fat. I ate out and I couldn't get enough fat on my plate. And so it was a little. Two, maybe high in protein, too low in fat, and then the morning, I'm not quite perfect right now. Granted, I suppose if you were dealing with a [00:47:30] stage four cancer and you wanted to be in deeper states of ketosis, but I also find, and if you look at the, Virta health data is that people, when they first start a ketogenic diet, their ketones are really hot because they're not used to using them, and then they start using them.

[00:47:47] Dr. Christy Kesslering: They kind of, you know, they can. Go with the flow, their body levels out. So ketone levels do tend to taper off with time, but the metabolic state is still there. So I am far [00:48:00] more concerned or looking at insulin levels and IGF one levels and, you know, Dr. Nasia trifecta and inflammation markers. Are we improving the terrain?

[00:48:11] Dr. Christy Kesslering: Are we continuing to improve the terrain? so, and I have some people. They've never te, I know they're in ketosis because I know what they're eating, and their numbers are moving like rock stars. But I have some people I don't know they've ever tested, even though I would encourage it, but you know, they don't all find me in the same route.

[00:48:29] Dr. Christy Kesslering: [00:48:30] So some people are ready to track their diet and some people are not. Some people are ready to prick their finger every day and other people are not like, they're like, just tell me what to eat. How to eat it. I'll do that. You know, and yet I'm seeing PSAs drop 50% in six months. You know, like we, we still see benefit.

[00:48:47] Dr. Christy Kesslering: So, I, I wanna say that I had one, one woman who did test, but I don't know that her ketones were ever above 1.2, no, 1.5 to two, and yet her [00:49:00] breast tumor went away, or lymph node went away. And that's not all she was doing. Like, I, I wanna preface it by not everybody just heals by going on a ketogenic diet.

[00:49:09] Dr. Christy Kesslering: She did a lot of other work, you know, a lot of, getting back to nature and, and um, you know, circadian rhythm, sleep, you know, all of those things matter. But I, it's, but I will say a ketogenic diet is pretty powerful.

[00:49:26] Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah. Okay. Well, and, and this I appreciate because this is [00:49:30] what I tell my clients too, that I am, I don't think you need to be in that high level. I, I see those high levels once

[00:49:37] Dr. Christy Kesslering: Oh sure.

[00:49:39] Dr. Katie Deming: like, but, but even with fasting, it can take like, you know, three or four days to get in there for some people initially, but, That what I describe to people similar to what you say is that if we can get some level of ketones above, you know, above 0.5, like ideally above one is where I say to so that we're getting some [00:50:00] ketones. I find that people do better long term with focusing on getting some level of ketosis rather than shooting for that high level and saying, I'm gonna stay here forever.

[00:50:10] Dr. Katie Deming: 'cause I'm just like, I don't even know that I could if I was super disciplined and knew what I was doing. Would be able to stay at that high level for the exact reason that you said it's like, it's stress, it's emotions, it's sleep, it's all the other things. Blue light, all the things that in effect our glucose and our ketone

[00:50:28] Dr. Christy Kesslering: and [00:50:30] probably the stress of not getting their ketones above two, then make their ketones even lower. Like I have some people who are so focused on hitting what, what number do you want me to be at? That I don't care, like something in this range. you know, and, and if it's not, then we just meet. Are you doing what I want you to do?

[00:50:50] Dr. Christy Kesslering: Like, have you tracked your diet? Like, 'cause that's the first question. Well, what exactly are you eating? How much of these things are you eating? How much? Because I will tell you, everybody under eats that [00:51:00] everybody under eats that no one eats enough of that.

[00:51:02] Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, it's been such a privilege to have you on the show and because this is the thing is that, you know, when you're practicing, when you're actually using these principles with real people. There's a lot of nuances. Like you said, it's not the ROT studies and, and actually I'm super grateful for all of the research that's being done because we need that.

[00:51:24] Dr. Katie Deming: But then when you are working with people, what you just said, I just got off a call with my community [00:51:30] and you know, the Siegfried episode just came out. Yesterday and several of 'em were like, oh no, I, I'm not doing. And I was like, no, no. It's like we've talked about this. You don't have to be in that high level all of the time.

[00:51:44] Dr. Katie Deming: It is an approach, like if someone is like, I wanna focus on just using diet to control the cancer, you know, setting that goal of getting into therapeutic ketosis for some period of time I think is fine. But it's like when we're talking about living in that [00:52:00] space, you know, it's just. Number one, it set something that I think is hard to maintain, but then like exactly what you said, what they think about their food and how what, how well they're doing, you know, in quotes is another stressor.

[00:52:15] Dr. Katie Deming: And these are often people pleasers who are like, you know, wanting to do the right thing, wanting to get it all right. And then the diet becomes like another trap for them to get into that they feel like, oh, I'm not doing enough. I'm not, you know, I'm not succeeding. And that's the [00:52:30] last thing that we want in this space.

[00:52:31] Dr. Christy Kesslering: Right, a hundred percent. And again, I always tell everybody that you know. We're all on this journey. You are in n equals one. And a lot of times it's a lot of self experimentation to figure out what's gonna be the best route for you, the best way to do this. So I always have to have everybody take a step back and let's figure out what do we know and what don't we know?

[00:52:53] Dr. Christy Kesslering: I just try to always say, well, what do we actually know about that topics and what don't we know? And is that something you wanna do based on the [00:53:00] information we have?

[00:53:00] Dr. Katie Deming: Beautiful advice. Dr. Keseling, thank you so much for being on the show. If people want to find you, how can they find you?

[00:53:08] Dr. Christy Kesslering: The best way is just to go to my website, which is kes rx.com. I do have a resources page that I link a lot of my podcast interviews, a lot of coursework that I offer, but that you can also actually schedule an appointment with me or send me. An email. I, I am booking out quite a ways, but I do have an active cancellation list or reschedule list.

[00:53:29] Dr. Christy Kesslering: [00:53:30] but I have to have people ready to go. So people who book, oops, people who book, their appointments and then get paperwork done and labs done, then they're ready to fill an opening. So it is, and I, and I try to protect myself a little bit as you like. Right. We have to. Heal ourselves. because I could overwork, I could work 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

[00:53:54] Dr. Christy Kesslering: So I really have to try to protect myself. So then I do start to kind of open a few slots once I know what [00:54:00] my level would be in a, in a particular week or two. So

[00:54:03] Dr. Katie Deming: Perfect. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. I look forward to having you back again 'cause I know that we'll continue this conversation. So thank you so

[00:54:10] Dr. Christy Kesslering: thank you for having me. See you soon.