Episode 142 | Truth About Dairy & Cancer: What You Need To Know

[00:00:00] Dr. Katie Deming: In this episode, the truth about dairy and cancer, what you need to know

[00:00:05] Dr. Katie Deming: Welcome to Born to Heal, the podcast helping people with cancer go beyond Western medicine to heal naturally through the ancient power of prolonged water fasting, so you can ditch the toxic protocols, take control of your health, and let your body do what it's designed to do: heal. I'm your host, Dr.

[00:00:25] Dr. Katie Deming: Katie Deming.

[00:00:26] Dr. Katie Deming: Today, I'm joined back on the show by Monica Corrado, [00:00:30] holistic nutritionist and teaching chef, and one of the leading voices on traditionally prepared dairy. In our conversation, you'll learn why most commercial dairy is harmful for cancer and the specific reason it's inflammatory, high in sugar, and made from cows that were never meant to produce m- the milk you're drinking.

[00:00:50] Dr. Katie Deming: You'll also learn the difference between A1 and A2 casein and why this single distinction may be the reason so many people think they have a dairy [00:01:00] allergy when they actually don't. And finally, the simple way to turn dairy into a healing, lactose-free, microbiome-building food at home, even if you've never cultured anything in your life.

[00:01:13] Dr. Katie Deming: If you've ever been told to give up dairy completely because you have cancer, this episode is going to change the way you think about one of the most ancient and healing foods on the planet.

[00:01:24] Dr. Katie Deming: Let's dive in.

[00:01:25] Dr. Katie Deming: Monica Corrado, welcome back to the show. [00:01:30] It's a pleasure to have you back here.

[00:01:32] Monica Corrado: well, it's always a pleasure to be here. Thanks.

[00:01:35] Dr. Katie Deming: So today I wanted to talk a little bit about dairy and cancer, because I think this is one area that's very confusing for many people, and they think that if I have cancer, I absolutely have to avoid all dairy. And I think that that comes from– There are, there are some reasons why just straight up dairy that you buy at [00:02:00] the grocery store is not something that you want to do if you have cancer.

[00:02:03] Dr. Katie Deming: And I think the big thing for people to know is like with cancer, we want to reduce sugars, right? And dairy is lactose, right? But there are things that we can do to milk to culture off that lactose to make it so that it is low lactose. But that's not the only issue, right? That's the big one I think that people immediately think of.

[00:02:28] Dr. Katie Deming: And so I want– What I would like [00:02:30] with this conversation is just to help people understand what is it about dairy that could be potentially harmful or inflammatory around breast ca– or not can- breast cancer specifically, but just cancer. And then what are the types of dairy that might be safe, and how would we prepare those to make it so that it would be something that could be healing for someone with cancer?

[00:02:55] Dr. Katie Deming: So that's really where I'm wanting to go with this conversation. And I know you're, you know, [00:03:00] such a wealth of knowledge with, dairy and whole milk and, and cultured dairy, so you were the perfect person to have this conversation with, so thank you for being here for this.

[00:03:09] Monica Corrado: Well, it is a favorite topic of mine for, for a very long time. so yes, poor dairy cows and dairy have been demonized and, you know, for good reason actually in the US, because, commercial dairy really is something that people don't want to be drinking. [00:03:30] So, you know, I'm always talking about like pulling, like what's,what's real and what's not real, right?

[00:03:36] Monica Corrado: Like there's some truth in here. The truth is all people, sick, not sick, healing, not healing, young, old, whatever, really should not be eating commercial dairy. Dairy that you can just walk into the grocery store and buy. it's made by what we call the dairy industrial complex. Those are my little bunny ears.

[00:03:58] Monica Corrado: No. The dairy [00:04:00] industrial complex, which has been around for, you know, a very long time. So I… What I'd like to do is kind of pull that apart a little bit. So yes- no one should be eating industrial dairy, certainly, industrial dairy or commercially– commercial dairy that is, not organic at least.

[00:04:17] Monica Corrado: And I, I will go ahead and, and, break that up a little bit in, in a moment. but what do I mean by industrial dairy? So a long time ago in a land far away, I'm [00:04:30] thinking of Europe, I'm thinking of traditional dairy cows. Traditional dairy cows were brown cows. they were Jerseys and Guernseys and Swiss Browns and Ayrshires.

[00:04:43] Monica Corrado: They're all brown cows. Traditional dairy cows are brown cows. And what we've gone to in the US, in America specifically here, is black and white cows, Holsteins. They are a breed of cow [00:05:00] that, they have bred for volume. For volume and not quality. So quality being fat, right? So commercial dairy in the US is, the vast majority of it is Holstein cows.

[00:05:16] Monica Corrado: That is low-quality milk, right? And it's also what we call A1 casein. I'll go into that aga- a little bit more about A2 and A1 in a moment. But, but again, so the dairy that is [00:05:30] out there for us to be buying for the, for the typical American, whether it's, you know, Sally, Sue or Joe or whoever's going into the store, is, from cows that are Holsteins.

[00:05:41] Monica Corrado: They are, again, inferior milk. They are A1 milk. they are raised in confinement. Hmm. So when you… Meaning concentrated animal feeding operations, they're raised in confinement. They are fed grains which they're not supposed to eat. [00:06:00] God made cows to eat grass, and that is going to have an impact on the nu-nutrient content of that milk, right?

[00:06:08] Monica Corrado: So, and that's the milk that they use to make, the yogurt and the cultured cream and the whatever it is that you're buy- the cheese. What are you buying in the store? The milk that you're drinking in the store. So the quality of the milk is not good. the protein in the milk, as I said, is an A1, and it's just no longer the traditional dairy cows.

[00:06:29] Monica Corrado: It's not made from [00:06:30] milk from traditional dairy cows. So that's the beginning of the issue. So the quality of the milk is not good. And then What does that mean? That means that the milk that you're e- drinking or the products, milk products that you're eating that are from… That are typical commercial dairy will be high in sugar.

[00:06:51] Monica Corrado: Problem. That is a problem for cancer. So again, we're pulling it apart, right? So yeah, it'll be in high in sugar. Okay, so we don't want that. That's a problem. They'll [00:07:00] also be, highly inflammatory. That dairy is highly inflammatory. Why? Because of the way the cows were raised, because of the way the cows were fed or what they were fed.

[00:07:10] Monica Corrado: Because that dairy is, is an A1 dairy, A1 casein in that dairy, right? And because of the toxins that those cows are exposed to. So does anyone wanna be eating that dairy? No. Like nobody, whether you're healthy or you're not healthy, we don't wanna be eating that kind of commercial dairy. [00:07:30] So there's an- another option, right?

[00:07:33] Monica Corrado: There's another option, and the other option is to be eating, which is a very different option, which is actually very healing and is very, soothing to the gut. It helps with your microbiome, right? It helps you build a robust microbiome. There's no sugar in it. Ta-da. What is that dairy? That is homemade, right?

[00:07:56] Monica Corrado: Let's make it at home, right? And we're gonna talk about, [00:08:00] good, better, best, as you said. So what's the best dairy to use? Raw milk that you get from a farm, which, oh, by the way, raw milk dairies are under far more scrutiny and have far more rules than any of the ones that are pasteurizing the milk.

[00:08:20] Monica Corrado: They really are. If you wanna find beautiful raw milk, you go to realmilk.com, which is a project of the Weston A. Price Foundation. In any case, what's the [00:08:30] Cadillac? Raw milk. Raw milk that you bring home. Now, is the raw milk high in sugar? Yes. Milk is naturally, as you said, high in sugar. It's high in lactose, milk sugar.

[00:08:42] Monica Corrado: So you bring that beautiful raw dairy home from a beautiful traditional dairy cow, brown. Yeah. From a farmer that you know, maybe. Sometimes we can know our farmers, that are these beautiful dairy farmers, right? And then what do we do to [00:09:00] it? Then we make it no sugar. How? We do something called a value-added process.

[00:09:08] Monica Corrado: That's what I call it anyway. We culture that milk into yogurt. We culture that, that cream into cultured cream. Maybe we'll make kefir out of it, right? Kefir. Kefir, that beautiful Incredibly, healthy, healing, potent yeast, [00:09:30] lactic acid yeast beverage, right? Kefir or kefir. So, so all dairy is not alike, and some dairy you really don't wanna be drinking or eating or consuming at all.

[00:09:41] Monica Corrado: But there really is a way to have dairy in your diet, that can bring all the goodness. It brings bioavailable calcium. It brings beautiful enzymes. It bri- brings amazing microbes. It helps with– gives you lactic acid, which is very soothing to, to everyone's gut, yeah? It's [00:10:00] just a beautiful food, and the Cadillac, as I said, would be raw milk, right?

[00:10:06] Monica Corrado: It could be raw co– could be raw cow, could be raw goat, but raw milk that you take home and through very, very simple, traditional, easy processes, you long culture it, so there is no lactose, right? Sugar's a problem. Okay, no sugar. Well, just culture it long. Yeah? And then we get all the benefits from this beautiful, beautiful [00:10:30] food.

[00:10:30] Dr. Katie Deming: that's beautiful. I love that just explaining the difference between what is the dairy that people are just buying in the store versus the high quality dairy that you're getting from raw milk But let's tease that apart just for a second.

[00:10:46] Dr. Katie Deming: Like, how is raw milk different than the milk that they're buying in the store in addition to the, what you've described about the cows and, and the different types of cows that are, are producing this milk, how is [00:11:00] raw milk treated, and why is there this big fear people have about raw milk? I just wanna talk about that real quick because people say, you know, “I tried raw milk and I got so sick,” or, “I, you know, that sounds dangerous to do raw milk.”

[00:11:15] Dr. Katie Deming: Can you explain that? And you did say that a little bit about the scrutiny, but I, I'd love to have you break that down so people understand.

[00:11:20] Monica Corrado: Yeah, yeah, sure. So what's really interesting, I love this part. What's really interesting is this: raw milk [00:11:30] is a very potent food. It's a very potent food. It's full of microbes. It's fill, full of beautiful microbes. When it's raw, right, it comes straight out of the cow, and then you bring it home, and there are the microbes.

[00:11:46] Monica Corrado: The microbes, the enzymes, you know, everything else. And so when people… And I'll back it up in a minute and, and talk about that other piece, but, many times when people bring raw milk home for the first time, they will drink, [00:12:00] they'll be like, “This is so delicious.” Right? Like, they'll take a sip and they'll want to drink the whole glass, 8-ounce glass, 10-ounce glass, and then they will be sick.

[00:12:11] Monica Corrado: And why will they be sick? Nothing wrong with the milk. What's– It's because it's a very, very potent, microbially live, potent food. And so when you, you know, when you put that much good bacteria, if you will, the beneficial [00:12:30] bacteria, the beneficial microbes, when you have all of that for the first time, it, it will produce what we call die-off.

[00:12:37] Monica Corrado: I mean, you will not feel well. You could throw up, you could feel dizzy, you could have a tummy ache, all sorts of things going on. And it, and it really is not about the milk itself. It's not about whether or not the milk was bad or whether it's hard, you know, whether raw milk is bad for you or dangerous.

[00:12:55] Monica Corrado: It's not about the milk, it's about your gut, right? Meaning you're not used [00:13:00] to having all these beneficial bacteria or microbes in your gut. and then raw milk gets a bad rep, just in general, it gets a bad rap, right? Because, “Oh, I tried raw milk, I was so sick.” Yeah, well, you– When we try it, we need to take a sip, put it away.

[00:13:17] Monica Corrado: Tomorrow, have two sips, put it away, you know. Slowly allow your body to incorporate the beautiful microbes. Slowly, slowly, slowly. So that's, that really is one piece [00:13:30] of it, and it's interesting because, it's sad that, that, often that's what happens. Someone will say, “Oh, I tried raw milk, but I was so sick.

[00:13:38] Monica Corrado: It's gotta be bad for me.” Hmm, no, you just had too much too fast of a good thing. That's what happened. The other thing is that, it's very interesting also because raw milk dairies, right, are under far more, you wanna call it regulations, more testing, far more stringent [00:14:00] than dairies that are not raw because of the fact that you're drinking it straight from the cow, right?

[00:14:08] Monica Corrado: So let's, let's just look at that for just a moment. What, what do I mean by that? So are you ready? Really, are you ready? I'm ready. Here we go. A long time ago, the quality of milk was, judged by how much cream was in the milk, right? Because when milk comes from a cow, if it goes into a jar, you can see there's a cream line.

[00:14:29] Monica Corrado: The cream [00:14:30] separates from the milk. And so this farmer over here, right, might, might be producing, might have cows on pasture that are producing a third of the jar is cream, right? And then there's a guy over there over the hill that has cows, but his cows are only producing, you know, an inch of cream in a quart jar, right?

[00:14:51] Monica Corrado: And then, and so on and so on it goes. So people would really want the milk that was full of the cream, right? The milk that's, [00:15:00] that's full of the cream. That, the cream was always, the determinant of whether or not this was a high-quality milk or it wasn't. Well, when pasteurization came along, all the milk was collected, and to this day, all the milk is collected from different farmers.

[00:15:18] Monica Corrado: Doesn't matter how much fat is in this one versus that one versus that one, because they dump it all into the same vat, and then they homogenize it. I don't know if they [00:15:30] homogenize first or pasteurize first, but regardless, they are stirring it all together so that the milk goes through… Pardon me. The cream goes through all the milk equally. so farmers don't actually have… This is in the commercial, now it's in the commercial dairy realm, right? So they have no reason to worry about like, “Oh, I really wanna like have really good full-fat milk or really high-fat milk,” because it's all gonna be dumped together anyway. So for the general public, they're dumping all, you know, commercial [00:16:00] dairies dump all the milk into one big vat, you know, mix it all up so all the fat is, that's called homogenization.

[00:16:07] Monica Corrado: Yeah, so it's all equal. There's fat equal. There are no cream lines anymore unless you look for specific brands, right? And then they sterilize it, right? They sterilize it all. So sterilization, right? We call it pasteurization, but that's just a fancy word for the guy who said, “Let's sterilize everything.”

[00:16:27] Monica Corrado: Because if we sterilize it, we don't have to [00:16:30] keep, we don't have to keep the sanitation standards up. What? We don't have to keep the sanitation standards up. We don't have to worry if there's a problem of like, oh, there is a pathogenic microbe, like one of the cows was sick. They don't have to worry about any of those things because once that milk goes into the big vat and gets sterilized, it's totally…

[00:16:55] Monica Corrado: Right? Like e- everything's dead.

[00:16:57] Monica Corrado: But with raw milk, you see, if there's [00:17:00] even, if there's any problem, right? Like if, if any cow's been sick, of course not, they're gonna throw out all the milk. They would never sell it to you because they have no way to sterilize it Right? It's an amazing thing to think about.

[00:17:13] Monica Corrado: Pasteurization is sterilization, and when you're drinking pasteurized milk, here's the bomb. When you're drinking pasteurized milk, you're drinking dead bacteria. That's what you're drinking because they don't have any way to, [00:17:30] like, they're not gonna strain it out for you, folks. Like, literally, you're drinking dead bacteria.

[00:17:35] Monica Corrado: And so part of that, that's part of the reason, part, there's many… This is like a multifaceted thing, but it's part of why people have issues with milk, like allergies or sensitivities. Why? Because they're drinking dead bacteria, and that's going to make the immune system have a response, right? So in any case, go ahead.

[00:17:58] Dr. Katie Deming: No. Well, and I think this [00:18:00] is an important point because a lot of people think, “Oh, raw dairy, that's dangerous.” But actually what you're describing is that the standards are higher, and when we're drinking the pasteurized milk, we're not getting the benefits of actually what the raw milk brings, which is, are those beautiful microbes that our microbiome needs, which, you know…

[00:18:20] Dr. Katie Deming: And especially for cancer, we need a robust microbiome to support our immune system, and we are missing this. This is part of [00:18:30] one of the reasons why we're so sick, is people's microbiomes are so out of whack because we are drinking milk that's been sterilized and everything is, you know, sterilized is better, but actually our ancestors were healthier when they were eating these beauti- eating and drinking these beautiful microbes.

[00:18:47] Dr. Katie Deming: So, you know, number one, the standards are higher. Number two, the nutrient density of the food with y- like you described, the enzymes and the microbes, all of that is going to be [00:19:00] better or, or nonexistent actually in the store-bought versus the whole milk. And so I think that that's important, and also I love that you addressed that with the die-off because this is something that people think, “Oh, there was something wrong with raw milk,” but it was literally just that they had too much and that their microbiome couldn't handle it because they're not used to it.

[00:19:21] Dr. Katie Deming: So I think that that's, that's beautiful and super helpful. I'm wondering, one thing in here you started to talk about or you, you know, touched on it but you said you'd [00:19:30] come back to it is, can we talk a little bit about the A2 versus A1 and what that means and why that's such a big deal and why people are talking more and more about that?

[00:19:40] Monica Corrado: Sure, sure. Yeah. Yeah. So, cow milk, has two types of protein. One is whey and one is casein. So whey is a simple protein that- Bodies, you know, do very well, it's digested very easily. Casein is a complex protein, and it's difficult for the body to [00:20:00] digest, just in general because it's a large, complex molecule.

[00:20:03] Monica Corrado: We'll talk more about that in a minute. Let's get to this A1, A2 thing. So, so traditional dairy cows. How now brown cow, right? Traditional dairy cows are brown. If you ever have a question, just look in the field. Is that a traditional dairy cow? Oh, it's black and white. Mm, the answer's no, right? So brown cows are traditional dairy cows.

[00:20:27] Monica Corrado: They have something that's called A2 [00:20:30] casein. so what we've started doing is, you know, categorizing, like looking at the protein itself, right? So the protein in a brown cow is called A2. The protein in a black and white cow is called A1. This is very interesting if you actually look at this in terms of like history, right?

[00:20:50] Monica Corrado: Like, hmm. So traditional dairy cows, A2, very easy for the body to digest, for the human body to digest, [00:21:00] okay? A1 protein, not easy for the body to digest. So if you just track it, like when did the American dairy industry switch to Holsteins? They've switched to them because they're able to produce volume, okay?

[00:21:16] Monica Corrado: Higher volume than the other cows will. But I would bet that if we looked at it, the dairy sensitivities or allergies and the growth in those allergies would be [00:21:30] connected to that switch from brown to black and white, okay? So A1 casein is harder for humans to digest. A2 casein is easier. And so what we're seeing now, and that's just in general for everybody, doesn't, again, doesn't matter whether you're a girl, a guy, a…

[00:21:47] Monica Corrado: Right? You're young, you're old, that's just what is. Like where do you live? Europe or US? Dairy cows produce milk that has seeing is really over the last, I don't know, couple of year, maybe five years, [00:22:00] three years, recently, pretty recently,the dairy industry has caught on to this.

[00:22:06] Monica Corrado: The organic dairy industry has caught on to this. Not so much the other one that's not organic, right? The typical commercial dairy. But organic dairy industry has caught on to the fact that people are, people want A2 dairy. People are asking for it. Specifically, people in the autism community figured this out that, “Oh, my child does better on A2.

[00:22:29] Monica Corrado: I, [00:22:30] I wonder what this is,” right? So there was really like a call for, “I want A2, I want A2.” So, so again, you can find in the store, organic dairy now that is A2. It's written right on it. It says A2. It might even say A2A2. What does that mean? Hmm. A2A2 means that they've actually, like their entire herd is A2.

[00:22:55] Monica Corrado: ‘Cause remember, people, dairy farmers, especially small ones, I mean, it [00:23:00] costs money to, to raise cows. So, many of them will go through this transition sta- stage of like, “Oh, let me bring in some more brown cows,” right? For quality, for taste, for fat, for butter, you know, for all that, for all those reasons, for cream.

[00:23:16] Monica Corrado: and then so they start out as a, “Oh, no, we're A1A2,” and then they transition into A2A2. So, so we're looking for A2A2. Whether you are getting raw milk from your [00:23:30] fabulous dairy farmer down the road, whether you're in a raw milk state or you have a cow share, we're looking for A2. And, or if you're in the store, one of the things I said I was gonna talk about, you know, good, better, best.

[00:23:42] Monica Corrado: We already said best is raw, right? What you don't wanna be doing, that's not even good, it's bad, is commercial dairy that's not organic. But in the middle, we have this… I mean, I personally, when I work with people, I'm never going to tell them to go [00:24:00] drink, pasteurized milk, ever. Like, that's just not okay.

[00:24:04] Monica Corrado: But if you're gonna make your own yogurt or you're going to make your own, cultured cream, or you're going to make your own kefir and you don't have access to raw milk, what's the next best option? The next best option would be to get, go and buy, right? Organic. I'm gonna give you the… There's like little key terms, right?

[00:24:24] Monica Corrado: We're gonna look for organic. We're gonna look for grass-fed. Sometimes it's called pastured, so [00:24:30] pastured, not pasteurized, right? So organic, grass-fed, whole. We're not talking about skim here. We want whole milk, right? And then if you can find A2, and it's out there, that's the milk or the cream that you're looking for, so that then you can make your own homemade yogurt and kefir and cultured cream.

[00:24:52] Monica Corrado: And why do I keep going back to that? Because we started with what's the dairy that people could, could have in the cancer, [00:25:00] right? In the cancer realm. Like, what dairy are we talking about? We're talking about lactose-free, right? You can't… And I'm not talking about go buy Lactaid. This is not Lactaid, folks.

[00:25:11] Monica Corrado: This is go and buy the best quality milk you can find, whether it's raw, which would be optimal and nutritionally superior. I just have to say it that way, right? If you can't get raw, then let's get organic, right? Grass-fed, whole milk, A2. [00:25:30] Right? Pasteurized, not ultra high temperature pasteurized. That's another piece you have to look at.

[00:25:35] Monica Corrado: And then let's bring it home and let's make our own yogurt because when we make our own yogurt, we can culture it long, right? If we culture yogurt long, 24 hours-ish, maybe a little bit longer, maybe a little bit less, but we're looking for a 24-hour culture, which means that that yogurt will be lactose-free.

[00:25:54] Monica Corrado: What is lactose-free? Sugar-free. Yay! You can do the same thing with [00:26:00] kefir. Make your own, very easy. You can do the same thing with cream, cultured cream, which is like, ah, the bomb. Amazing, delicious, right? So good for you, good for your brain, good for your hormones, good for your joints, good for your happy factor, right?

[00:26:18] Monica Corrado: Cultured cream. But you can make all of these lactose-free, so by culturing them long. And back to the casein piece, remembering that [00:26:30] casein again is a, what we call a complex protein, complex protein molecule. And so when you culture the, this dairy, whether it's the cream or the milk, whether it's raw or it's pasteurized as we just discussed, if you culture it long enough, then the casein will also be partially a lot, but, you know, not entirely, but very much broken down and what we call pre-digested by the microbes.

[00:26:58] Monica Corrado: We love those microbes. They're [00:27:00] helpers. So they help us by eating the sugar, and then we get to eat them and they're still alive. They're not dead. They're alive if you've made it at your home, at home, and they are, going to help you be well by, you know, giving you a robust microbiome over time.

[00:27:22] Dr. Katie Deming: Well, and I think that, you know, you and I have started to work on this together with my faster, so I do [00:27:30] prolonged water fasting. And in the refeeding, one of the things that is really important is thinking about repopulating the microbiome with the microbes that support a healthy immune system. And so cultured dairy, when it's done right, like you're describing, so when you culture the dairy for 24 hours, you basically have eliminated the sugar, you've reduced the casein.

[00:27:55] Dr. Katie Deming: We're doing it with A2 milk regardless, so the casein should be less [00:28:00] inflammatory anyway. And what you get from that is you get a beautiful food that is going to help. It's got calcium, it's got fat, it's got, the microbes that we need, and it's nutrient dense and very good for your overall health.

[00:28:17] Dr. Katie Deming: And so this is one of the things that makes me sad when I hear people are like, “Oh no, don't do any dairy if you have cancer.” And the truth is that in some ways that's correct, but if you do it the wrong way. So [00:28:30] it's just like anything, and that's what I've learned so much from working with you and having you in my program and teaching my people how to make traditionally prepared foods.

[00:28:40] Dr. Katie Deming: Like how did our grandparents, our great-grandparents prepare food? Because they knew how to prepare foods to make it So that it wasn't inflammatory in our body, and we've just lost all that knowledge. And so this is a big piece of it with the dairy. And, you know, to bring that back in for my fasters, a lot of them have [00:29:00] given up dairy because they were told for cancer specifically, you should stay away from it.

[00:29:05] Dr. Katie Deming: And then they're doing it and really, you know, osteoporosis. I have several people who had osteoporosis, and now their bones are getting stronger. And then, the other question that comes up is about IGF-1. And this is, you know, an inflammatory factor, insulin growth factor, and it is high IGF-1 is a problem with cancer, and so we wanna lower that.

[00:29:28] Dr. Katie Deming: And this has been a big question for me, [00:29:30] people coming into the fast and they're like, “Oh, if I do this cultured dairy, then is that gonna raise my IGF-1?” And the one thing that I can say is that I have a lot of fasters now who've been– they test their IGF-1 and are doing the cultured dairy and not seeing a rise in their IGF-1 with the cultured dairy.

[00:29:47] Dr. Katie Deming: So I think that is really helpful to know because that's one of the big questions that initially people asked me and I said, “You know what? I'm not sure 'cause I don't know and we don't have good data on this.” But I'm starting to see it in my practice that people are [00:30:00] not having their IGF-1 levels go up when they're doing this kind of dairy.

[00:30:04] Dr. Katie Deming: Long cultured, either raw or the high qu– you know, highest quality that they can find A2, organic, pasture raised, all of that. So,

[00:30:15] Monica Corrado: that is a really big deal. Like, aren't we excited? It's just flip, I just flip my lid. I get so excited about these things because we know, like they knew, like grandma knew, like traditional cultures knew. [00:30:30] We knew. You raise your cow, you get the right cows. Aw, right? The beautiful cows. You raise them on pasture, you get their milk, and then you culture it long.

[00:30:43] Monica Corrado: Yay!

[00:30:44] Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah.

[00:30:45] Monica Corrado: really amazing. Like they knew, and now we have, you know, we have data that says, “Yeah, it's good for you. It's great for you.”

[00:30:51] Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah.I don't wanna go like crazy in detail on this, but talk about how does someone make, you know, a cultured yogurt. And we can kind of talk about [00:31:00] your favorite, a yogurt maker and also, you know, that you could do it without any equipment. You don't need to buy a yogurt maker. So let's just talk about that briefly so that people have a sense of, you know, how would they do this if they wanted to make, cultured dairy.

[00:31:15] Monica Corrado: So easy. Okay, here's what we're gonna do. So, we'll just talk about yogurt first. We'll start, talk about yogurt. Easy peasy. So what you need to make yogurt is, at its base, you could have a yogurt maker, and the [00:31:30] yogurt, best yogurt maker that I personally have found is Luvele. L-U-V-E-L-E, I think that's right.

[00:31:36] Monica Corrado: Luvele makes a beautiful yogurt maker. They have glass ins- like you're gonna make your yogurt in glass, which is really important. We don't wanna be making yogurt in plastic. So if you have an old yogurt maker that has plastic, out it goes. Bless it, you know, bye, thanks for your service, but we need glass in there, because we don't want heated tox- plastic toxins in our beautiful yogurt.

[00:31:56] Monica Corrado: So you could start with a yogurt maker. [00:32:00] You could also do my favorite, this is my favorite, which is a thermos. Like so easy to do, folks. Go get a thermos. You know those old thermoses? I go like this because it has a handle on it . It's the thermos brand thermos, the big 40 ounce ther- thermos brand thermos.

[00:32:16] Monica Corrado: It's wide mouth, it's stainless steel. You probably have one in the garage, people. Maybe you don't, but right, it's been around a long time. Anyway, so yogurt maker or thermos. You could also do it in a jar in, in your oven with a pilot light on, [00:32:30] frankly, if you have a pilot light, or even the light bulb. Yeah?

[00:32:34] Monica Corrado: So what we're talking about is getting milk. Now, raw milk is going to be easier to work with than pasteurized milk, right? Because raw milk, we're just going to heat the milk to 110. If you're working with pasteurized milk, we have to kill everything that might have grown in that sterilized milk since it was sterilized at the plant.

[00:32:54] Monica Corrado: Did you know that piece? Isn't that crazy? Right, like literally you have to heat [00:33:00] pasteurized milk to 180, right, Fahrenheit, and then bring it back down to 110. So with raw milk, we just go up to 110. Easier, skip a step. Anyway, it's fine. So, you get the milk to 110, and then you're going to add some yogurt to it.

[00:33:16] Monica Corrado: The easiest way to start is to get, literally, to go to the store and get some good quality yogurt like White Mountain Bulgarian. It's the only yogurt that I'm aware of that's sold in a [00:33:30] glass jar. Everything else is in plastic, I think.

[00:33:32] Dr. Katie Deming: And it's also cultured for 24 hours. So this is actually– this is a good option when we're talking about best is gonna be making it yourself, which is Monica's talking about right now, but a better, like that's the best option, but a bet- better option, kind of the mid-grade would be White Mountain Bulgarian because it is in a glass jar like you described, but it's also cultured for 24 hours, so it's very low lactose.

[00:33:57] Dr. Katie Deming: So anyway, I just wanted to plug that.

[00:33:59] Monica Corrado: [00:34:00] I love that. Yeah, so go get that one. If you can't get that one, then get the best quality, right, organic whole milk, grass-fed yogurt you can find. That might be Maple Hill, that might be Nancy's grass-fed, that might be Straus. I don't know. There's a bunch of them out there that are pretty good that you could use.

[00:34:18] Monica Corrado: Get a quarter of a cup of that, put it into a quart of, of milk, stir it up. See, if you're in a thermos, it's so easy. You heat your milk to 110, right? You put [00:34:30] it in the thermos, you get some starter culture, you put it in the thermos, you whisk it up, you cap it, you put it on the counter for 24 hours.

[00:34:38] Monica Corrado: Done. You could do the same thing with a yogurt maker. You put your milk in there, you get it to 110, you put in your yogurt starter, whisk it all in, 24 hours later, you're done. This is not difficult to do, folks. It really isn't. It's so easy. And if you don't wanna do that, do something easier.

[00:34:58] Monica Corrado: You may not agree with me, [00:35:00] Dr. Katie, but kefir is easier than yogurt.

[00:35:04] Dr. Katie Deming: I'm gonna disagree,

[00:35:05] Monica Corrado: Eventually. Eventually, it's easier. Why? Because, because with kefir or kefir, you don't have to heat the milk at all. You just put your milk out on the counter. Here's a pint, or here's a quart or a pint. Here's some kefir grains. Stir it around, stick it over there. 24 hours later, you've got your kefir. Okay.

[00:35:25] Dr. Katie Deming: I will say that, so just I've learned a tip on this one, is that of my [00:35:30] kitchen is too cold, so

[00:35:31] Monica Corrado: Ah,

[00:35:31] Dr. Katie Deming: why I've run into problems. But actually, if you have a little cabinet above your fridge, that's a perfect place. So that's the place where I've found that I can make kefir in my kitchen without everything going sideways.

[00:35:46] Dr. Katie Deming: So

[00:35:46] Monica Corrado: Fabulous, but that, I didn't, I didn't mention that. So yes, so I did say the yogurt gets held. The reason I'm putting it in a thermos or I'm putting it in a yogurt maker is 'cause I'm holding it for 24 hours at 110 degrees Fahrenheit, right? [00:36:00] But kefir, which we were just talking about, right, is room temperature, but room temperature needs to be 68 to 72.

[00:36:08] Monica Corrado: And if it's, if it's more like 68, it's gonna take a little longer. If it's more like 74 or 76, it's gonna be faster. Kefir, right? So, faster than 24 hours, but that's what we're looking for is that 24-hour culture.

[00:36:21] Dr. Katie Deming: Beautiful.

[00:36:23] Dr. Katie Deming: And let's, let's just give the listeners, tips in terms of where to get starter. So where would you recommend to get like [00:36:30] a kefir starter or a yogurt starter if they were not gonna use the White Mulb- White Mountain Bulgarian as the starter and they wanted to buy a starter?

[00:36:37] Monica Corrado: Sure, sure. Yeah. Well, a couple things. I would look to culturesforhealth.com. They are a really good operation. They have amazing videos. They have blogs and recipes and just tips and tricks, and so Cultures for Health, they've been around for a long time. I first met them at a Weston Price Wise Traditions, [00:37:00] conference actually when they first started, so they've been around for a long while.

[00:37:03] Monica Corrado: I would look there. You can get traditional and all sorts of cultures for yogurt and cultures for kefir and grains, and they're actually selling the grains in a jar now, which makes me, like, so happy because people have a hard time re– you know, they were selling them dry, and then you have to, like, wake them up, and how many times and how long, and, oh my goodness.

[00:37:27] Monica Corrado: We gotta make this simple for people. It's gotta be [00:37:30] simple or they're not going to do it. So now Cultures for Health is s- selling little glass jars of kefir grains that you can get your own. So exciting.

[00:37:39] Dr. Katie Deming: And they're always sold out of those,

[00:37:40] Monica Corrado: Oh, no. But–

[00:37:42] Dr. Katie Deming: they're…

[00:37:43] Monica Corrado: here's another place you can get them, and again, I'm gonna make a plug for the Weston A.

[00:37:47] Monica Corrado: Price Foundation here because the Weston, W-E-S-T-O-N, aprice.org, they have local chapters. People are making kefir all o- who knows? Maybe your neighbor [00:38:00] behind you is. Maybe there's people on the right, people across the street. People are making kefir now. Yay. We're finally, like, it's getting to be a thing.

[00:38:07] Monica Corrado: People are making their own kefir, and the grains grow, folks. So if you find a Weston A. Price local chapter, people may have grains that you can just get for free that have b- like, they just give them away at, at chapter meetings. Free meetings, no membership, you know, cost or whatever, but you'll, you can off- and these, these grains are usually quite robust because these people are [00:38:30] making their kefir, and they've been doing it for a long time.

[00:38:32] Dr. Katie Deming: I love it. And, you know, just as long as we're talking about kefir, I think it would be great to talk about kefir is different in terms of that it's rich in yeast, and why would people want to be drinking kefir that is, rich in yeast?

[00:38:48] Monica Corrado: Yes. Well, fabulous, fabulous question. Okay, so we have microbes. You all know that, So in terms of the human body, we are talking usually about [00:39:00] lactobacilli or lactic acid-producing yeast, one or the other. Lactobas- they're both very good for you. However, the yeast are far more, mm, they're stronger.

[00:39:12] Monica Corrado: They're more potent. They are the Hoovers of your body, meaning they go around cleaning up toxins and things, right? So, so kefir or kefir is much higher in yeast than it is in lactobacilli, the beneficial yeast. So if pe- people will hear that and be [00:39:30] like, “Oh, I can't have kefir because I have candida.” No, if you have candida, you need kefir because these are the good guys, right?

[00:39:36] Monica Corrado: So, yogurt will be high in lactobacilli and a little bit of yeast, and then kefir will be high in yeast and a little bit of lactobacilli. They're not, like, totally mutually exclusive, right? So, because that's not way, the way microbes work. So, yeah. It has been said that kefir, if everyone drank a cup of kefir a day, homemade please, because the stuff that you can [00:40:00] buy at the store is really not potent at all.

[00:40:03] Monica Corrado: right? Yeah. so, a cup of kefir a day and that– You know, it used to be an apple a day. Now it's a cup of kefir a day keeps the doctor away. Right? Keeps you well, let's say it that way.

[00:40:14] Dr. Katie Deming: Perfect. Well, thank you, Monica. This has been super informative, and I hope that people will take this information and go make their own cultured dairy because it's delicious, it's nutritious, and your [00:40:30] microbiome and your immune system are going to thank you for it. so

[00:40:33] Dr. Katie Deming: thank you so much for being here.

[00:40:35] Monica Corrado: Absolutely, and if they need the recipes, they can pick up my book,

[00:40:39] Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah. We'll link your book in here so that they

[00:40:41] Monica Corrado: Be fabulous. Thank

[00:40:43] Monica Corrado: you so much.

[00:40:45] Dr. Katie Deming: To summarize, here are the key points we covered today. First, not all dairy is created equal. Commercial industrialized dairy from Holstein cows raised in confinement is high in sugar, highly inflammatory, contains [00:41:00] A1 casein that's hard to digest, and yes, it's something that nobody should be consuming, whether you have cancer or not.

[00:41:08] Dr. Katie Deming: Raw milk from traditional brown dairy cows is the gold standard. It's actually held to higher safety standards than pasteurized milk. It's rich in beneficial microbes, enzymes, and bioaval- bioavailable calcium, and contains the easy to digest A2 casein. If raw isn't available, look for organic, [00:41:30] grass-fed whole milk that's A2/A2 and not high temperature ultra-pasteurized.

[00:41:35] Dr. Katie Deming: And finally, we learned that long cultured dairy is the game changer for cancer. When you culture milk for twenty-four hours into yogurt, kefir, or cultured cream, the microbes essentially eat the lactose, leaving you with a virtually sugar-free, lactose-free, pre-digested food that nourishes your microbiome, strengthens your bones, and based on what I'm seeing in my own fasters, does not [00:42:00] raise IGF-1.

[00:42:02] Dr. Katie Deming: The takeaway here is this: You don't need to be afraid of dairy. You just have to be afraid of the wrong dairy. Our grandparents and our great-grandparents knew this. They raised the right cows, fed them on pasture, and cultured the milk long. We've simply lost that knowledge, and it's time to bring it back.

[00:42:22] Dr. Katie Deming: A cup of homemade kefir a day really can keep the doctor away. Thank you so much for listening. I know your [00:42:30] time and attention are valuable, and I'm very grateful you chose to spend time with me today.

[00:42:35] Dr. Katie Deming: I look forward to connecting with you on the next episode. If you found today's episode helpful and you're ready to experience what real healing feels like from the inside out, including how to properly refeed with healing cultured foods like the ones discussed today, join me for a three-day water fast next month.

[00:42:53] Dr. Katie Deming: The link is below. Thank you for listening, and remember, just like me, you were born to [00:43:00] heal.