BONUS Episode | How “Battle” Language in Cancer Care Can Hurt More Than Help with Dr. Katie Deming | Metabolic Matters Podcast

[00:00:00] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Hello, I'm Dr. Katie Deming and welcome back to Born to Heal as someone who teaches about the importance of creating space for healing. I know how essential it is to practice what I preach. So we are taking a break in August. This gives myself and my team time to recharge and prepare for some exciting things coming your way.

[00:00:20] Dr. Katie Deming MD: This fall. I wanted to leave you with some of our most popular episodes and a few conversations where I was guests. On other shows, you'll hear powerful stories of healing and practical tools you can implement in your own life. And if this podcast has been helpful to you, would you consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or the podcast platform you use?

[00:00:43] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Your reviews help us reach more people who could benefit from these conversations about true healing and wellness. I'm grateful for this community we've built together and look forward to reconnecting with you soon. Until then, take care of yourselves. [00:01:00] And remember, you were truly born to heal.

[00:01:03] Dr. Katie Deming MD: I would say that everybody has that voice inside and knows what is right for their body. And even with all of the experience that I have of, you know, very deep knowledge of conventional therapy and then coming out and banning the spectrum and, you know, going completely natural, I don't know what is right for you.

[00:01:26] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Like the only you know what's right for you. And trusting that, trusting that little voice, trusting something inside of you is saying, Nope, this isn't right. Like this doctor's not for me, or This treatment's not for me. Trust that. Welcome

[00:01:42] Dr. Nasha: to Metabolic Matters podcast. Let's meet today's guest. Welcome back to another episode of the Metabolic Matters podcast, where we explore the intersection of science, spirit, and systems that shape [00:02:00] our health from the soil beneath our feet to the cells within our bodies.

[00:02:04] Dr. Nasha: Today, I'm very much looking forward to having a discussion with a fellow change maker in the world of oncology, Dr. Katie Deming. Dr. Deming is a board certified radiation oncologist with over 20 years of clinical experience. Dr. Deming is not only a highly respected physician, but also a pioneer in rehumanizing medicine.

[00:02:25] Dr. Nasha: We'll talk more about that in a moment. She's also the founder of Make Mary a line of healing garments for women with cancer and the voice behind a movement in the realm of mindfulness. Compassion and authenticity, bringing it back into healthcare in general, and cancer care in particular. Today, we're gonna dive into what it means to truly care for patients beyond the diagnosis.

[00:02:49] Dr. Nasha: Exploring the sacred space between science and humanity, and the importance of addressing trauma and the healing process, and how we as practitioners can show up [00:03:00] more whole and connected in the care that we offer. I can't wait. This is gonna be a conversation that is heartfelt, hopeful, and deeply human, just like Dr.

[00:03:10] Dr. Nasha: Deming herself. Let's dive in. I just wanna welcome you, Dr. Deming, for joining us today in your busy, busy schedule. Thank you for being here.

[00:03:20] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Thank you, Dr. Winters, for having me. It is truly my pleasure to be

[00:03:23] Dr. Nasha: here. It's really fun. I was saying before we started the recording that I knew we were gonna have this conversation and I knew of you and I remembered your game comes up a lot and I just needed to go and remind myself of a few things and realized I actually learned about you quite a while ago when I saw you first on your TED Talk.

[00:03:44] Dr. Nasha: When, when did that get published? Was that two years out? Just over two years now. So it was released in June of 2022. Gosh. So the cop, okay. Three shares going so fast, so, but when I saw that, you guys, I am hoping we'll [00:04:00] have this in the show notes today, but you have to go watch this because I'm watching this video and I'm thinking this person is, first of all, I would like to be friends with this human being in the real world.

[00:04:10] Dr. Nasha: Number one. Number two, you speak so, so to my own heart and soul as a, as a previous patient dealing with cancer, who I also very much struggled with some wording and some languaging out there, which we'll touch on here in a bit. And just the way you present it, you are so, so, so heart forward. It's just really beautiful.

[00:04:30] Dr. Nasha: And I just was very touched by you, your story and your sharings. And I see that you're doing amazing things in the world. So let's start by giving everybody a little background, 'cause I'm kind of queuing us up for part of our conversation here in a moment. But wow, you have gone from a standard of care, conventional trained, um, radiation oncologist, which, you know, by, I've met a lot of radiation oncologists in my time and most are literally getting in, getting out with a patient very quickly.

[00:04:57] Dr. Nasha: You have a very short window. You typically are with the [00:05:00] patient, you know, it's a very different than even the med ons or the surgical ons. You have a very, but sometimes limited role as far as bedside goes. This seems to be what you're all about today. So can you tell us a little bit about your background and your training and maybe what was the, the moment that said I should be bringing more to the table than just some radiation support?

[00:05:22] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Sure. So I did all of my training, my medical training at Duke University in North Carolina. So did medical school, internship and residency all there. And then I moved to the Pacific Northwest. I'm actually originally from California and so it came closer to home, but ended up in the Pacific Northwest and practiced there for 20 years actually.

[00:05:46] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And I practiced as a radiation oncologist specializing in breast and gynecologic cancers. And I also served as a healthcare leader. So I was, I designed and [00:06:00] led end to end cancer care for healthcare organization in the Pacific Northwest. You know, for me there are kind of multiple moments where things started to, I can now, in retrospect, I can see where things started to shift.

[00:06:17] Dr. Katie Deming MD: But I'll just tell you in 2018 where I started to just really sense like, something is wrong here and, and something like, I didn't know what the answer was, but I was starting to see the problem that I hadn't really seen before then. And it happened when I was at a meditation retreat and I heard the parable of the river, and it goes something like this, that once upon a time there was a village purse alongside a river.

[00:06:44] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And one day the villagers noticed a person drowning in the river. So they sent a villager out to rescue the person, bring them onto dry land. And then the next day there were two people drowning in the river. So they sent two villagers out to rescue the people and brought them to dry [00:07:00] land. And then the next day there were four and then eight and 16 and so on and so on.

[00:07:05] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And it doubled every day. And the villagers became very organized in their rescue operations. They developed elaborate rescue teams and they had boats and pulleys and all of these things. And they were doing such an amazing job at rescuing all these people who were drowning in the river. And the village elders were praising the villagers at what amazing job they were doing.

[00:07:27] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And I remember at the moment when I heard that at the village elders praising the, the villagers of the amazing work. I looked at my colleague, who is a GYN oncologist, and I said to her, this is us. Like this is a hundred percent us. We are glorified rescue workers on the river. And what the heck is happening upstream?

[00:07:45] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Why are so many younger patients walking through our doors? Like when she and I started practicing around the same time in 2006 and. At that time, you know, most of the women that I treated were in their sixties and [00:08:00] seventies is kind of what you would expect with breast and gynecologic cancers. But it was shifting and we were seeing younger and younger women.

[00:08:08] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And so that was the first time where I just thought, gosh, there's a problem here. And also, you know, in western medicine, like five to 10% of cancers are related to a genetic abnormality. And so five to 10% of the time we could say, yes, there's some genetic abnormality that's related to this. But 90% of the time we were saying, I don't know, it's bad luck.

[00:08:32] Dr. Katie Deming MD: I, you know, and to me, that was so dissatisfying, right? So with this village parable, I was like, and not only do we not know what's happening upstream, but by the way, when we put these people on dry land, when they finish the radiation or their surgery or chemotherapy, we don't know what made them sick in the first place.

[00:08:48] Dr. Katie Deming MD: So how do I keep them from falling back in the river? So that was like my first, and I was thinking about this from a healthcare leadership perspective of really looking at, you know, [00:09:00] we, I was working in an organization where we owned end-to-end care from screening and prevention. So you really have the potential that you could shift this, right?

[00:09:09] Dr. Katie Deming MD: But I was seeing like, oh, something is really not right because even when you own the whole end to end, like we don't have a grasp of what's really going on here. And so I started having these messages actually that I was not supposed to be practicing radiation oncology anymore. And it made no sense to be, because I had trained my whole life until I was 32 to become a radiation oncologist.

[00:09:32] Dr. Katie Deming MD: My first job, my first job outta training, I was 32. And so when I started telling my husband, I said, I'm having these weird messages, like I'm not supposed to be practicing radiation oncology. And I had an apparel business, so I actually have a patent. On a product for women with breast cancer. And I designed a line of bras and camisoles and underwear that were super soft designed for women with radiation skin reaction.

[00:09:59] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And [00:10:00] I knew that I wasn't gonna go like be an apparel designer. That wasn't what I was like, these messages weren't about that. I knew that. But I was like, I don't know what I meant to do. And when I told my husband this, he was like, well, you know, you have everything someone could want. You have a meaningful career where you're helping people who have cancer.

[00:10:19] Dr. Katie Deming MD: You make a great living. You're good at your job, your colleagues love you, your patients love you. And he said, this is something that now I know is not correct. But when he said it, I, I took it, internalized it. He said, maybe if you're not happy having everything someone would ever want, maybe there's something wrong with you.

[00:10:42] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Maybe you are never gonna be happy. Whoa. And so I internalized this for a little while. It allowed me to ignore the message for a while. Right. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna ignore these messages 'cause it doesn't make logical sense. But what happens when we ignore messages? They keep coming. Right? And then it gets louder.

[00:10:57] Dr. Katie Deming MD: So what happened in [00:11:00] 2020 was, and actually this was right after I had just been nominated to become the National Medical Director of all of Cancer Care for Kaiser Permanente. Wow. And had gone through like, I don't know, it felt like six months of interviews. Maybe it was shorter, like four months or something.

[00:11:14] Dr. Katie Deming MD: But I had done all these interviews and it had come down to me and one other woman who was a researcher, and ultimately she was the one who was awarded the position. And I knew when that happened. I was like, I know I'm not meant to build something in the system. I just knew, I was like, this is happening for me.

[00:11:31] Dr. Katie Deming MD: This is absolutely what's supposed to be happening here. And the next week I had something called a shared desk experience. This. A lot of people know what a near death experience is, but this is different in that the person who has the experience is not the person who is dying. It's actually someone who is at the scene where someone is dying and it can happen to healthcare professionals.

[00:11:57] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And so that happened to me the week [00:12:00] after this whole interview process had finished. And I had this clear, like knowing that I wasn't supposed to build something in the system, and then I had this experience and the only thing that I can tell you is I went outside the veil, like the love and the light and the ineffable, just beauty of whatever is real.

[00:12:19] Dr. Katie Deming MD: You know this, I think we, we, our perceived reality is not what's really going on, but when all of that fades away, it's just so beautiful and so much love. And that changed me actually having ex had that experience and being bathed in that light. When I came like back to myself, I was different in some ways and I can't explain what that was.

[00:12:43] Dr. Katie Deming MD: But the thing that I knew, I knew I had to leave. I had to leave the system. I had to leave my position as a radiation oncologist. I knew that those messages that I had been getting for a year were real and that I couldn't ignore them. And I also knew that it probably [00:13:00] was gonna mean the end of my marriage because my husband didn't understand, just could not understand the idea of just like leaving and not having a plan.

[00:13:08] Dr. Katie Deming MD: So basically I had to make the decision that I was like, okay, I see it. Now I have to do something with it. And because I spend so much time around people who are facing their own mortality, I do know what people say at the end of their life. And the biggest regret that people have is that they didn't have the courage to live their truth, that they did what everybody else wanted them to do.

[00:13:35] Dr. Katie Deming MD: So when this shared deck experience happened to me, I knew that if I didn't follow at the end of my life, I would be regretful. And I knew that I couldn't do that. And I said to my husband, I said, I would do anything for you, but I won't betray myself, right? Because we leave here alone, we are accountable to ourselves of how we lived our life.[00:14:00]

[00:14:00] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And so then I, that just set me on the course of deciding to leave Western Medicine, not having a plan and actually did that intentionally because I didn't wanna jump into another training program and start getting indoctrinated into something else. If there was something not quite right with the system, like I wanted to get outside and be able to see, okay, what is it that I'm missing?

[00:14:23] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And so that's really what led me out on this path. And then ultimately a year and a half later, after really doing my own healing and a lot of time researching what makes us well as compared to everything that I'd been taught about what makes us sick, right? Is what, what is allopathic medicine? I launched a practice that is more holistic and I span the spectrum because I have a very deep knowledge of conventional therapy.

[00:14:50] Dr. Katie Deming MD: So I don't wanna like lose that. You know? I like being able to help people who are wanting to have conventional therapy, but then I really spam the spectrum to people, you know, I help people who [00:15:00] don't wanna do any of that and heal naturally as well.

[00:15:02] Dr. Nasha: Wow. I mean, just a huge, wow. Just before we leave onto a different topic, I'm, I, I wanna go back to that shared death experience piece.

[00:15:12] Dr. Nasha: 'cause it clearly you had several inflection points along the last couple of years of your life, but that one was just so significant. I'm assuming, and maybe I'm assuming incorrectly, that as a radiation oncologist, you had probably been on several deaths, if you will been present with or for, how was this one different for you?

[00:15:34] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Well, the interesting thing was that my shared death experience was different in that I was not actually in physical presence with the person. So normally that's the, the, you know, description that people give, but it can happen actually at different locations. And so I'll just explain what happened. And I had been, [00:16:00] basically one evening I was meditating and I heard a woman's voice.

[00:16:07] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And when I heard her voice, she said to me, I can't let go. And it's not because of me, it's because of them. Instinctively, I knew she was dying, and I knew she was talking about her friends or family. And so I just started talking to her and I said, there's no rush. You'll know when it's time and I'll stay with you.

[00:16:29] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And so then I just sat with her and at some point in the meditation I saw that this was a woman named Misty. And I was not Misty's doctor, but I was connected to Misty because her best friend from childhood was an administrator at my hospital. And I had been helping her friend care for her, like making sure all of her wishes were granted that she could be at home, that she didn't have [00:17:00] unnecessary treatments, and also coaching.

[00:17:03] Dr. Katie Deming MD: My colleague on losing a friend when they were both in their early thirties. Both Misty and her best friend were in their early thirties at the time, and so just coaching her through that process of the grief and the loss. And so I saw that it was misty. At some point in this meditation, I just stayed with her.

[00:17:23] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And then eventually, at some point during the meditation, I started to feel like a pulling of, basically now what I would describe as her soul pulling away from her body. And I heard these pops like pop. And then after the last pop, the sky opened up and just the most, I, I basically feel like it was like being in the sun.

[00:17:48] Dr. Katie Deming MD: That's the best way that I can describe it. Like being engulfed in the sun. And all of a sudden she gassed. She was like, oh. It's so beautiful. And I could feel the tears streaming [00:18:00] down her face of the beauty. She was just like, I never had to worry. And then she was gone just like that. And I was in this space and just bathed in its love and its light.

[00:18:11] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And it was beauty beyond anything I could even describe. And I don't know how long I was there, because time doesn't exist in the, you know, in these realms. And so at some point I come to and I was like, what was that? Like? Wow. Like what was that? I literally had no idea, had no reference for it. I had never heard of a shared death experience.

[00:18:33] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And also I wasn't even in location, so it didn't make sense if I had heard about it. So I went to sleep and I didn't tell my husband what had happened because I was like, he's gonna think I'm crazy. Like, I don't know. I don't know what just happened. And so I went to sleep and then the next morning when I woke up, I woke up to a text from my colleague saying, thank you for helping me with Misty.

[00:18:55] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Misty died last night. And I said, oh yeah. Wow. [00:19:00] I was like, I knew that. I was like, but I couldn't tell her because I was afraid like, she's gonna think I'm crazy. Right. And also, I didn't wanna upset her. She's grieving. So I said, you know, I'm, I'm so sorry for your loss. I said, you know, I know this is a weird question, but what time did she die?

[00:19:16] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And she was pronounced dead within like a couple minutes of when that meditation ended. And I know that that happened to give me confirmation that that was real of what, what I had experienced. 'cause otherwise I think I might have brushed off and be like, I don't know what that was. It was life changing, but I didn't have Anyt context for it whatsoever before that.

[00:19:38] Dr. Nasha: Wow. So no previous experiences with kind of what some would perceive as the supernatural, the esoteric, or the new age. You had a very unique, out of nowhere not planned. Not intentional. Not hopeful. Like, I really hope I had this experience. No, you just, it just came to you and threw you. Wow.

[00:19:56] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Well, and in fact, I would say I was nervous.

[00:19:58] Dr. Katie Deming MD: I didn't wanna tell anyone that [00:20:00] it had happened.

[00:20:00] Dr. Nasha: Right. Wow. Interesting. Well, first of all, I, I'm so grateful that you shared that experience and, um, you know, without going in, as someone who's been very present with people who've made this transition, I've had similar experiences. And even the way you described it, I was feeling the physical memory, you know, and that, that experience that you're talking about.

[00:20:22] Dr. Nasha: But I've never, I've always had dreams of that, but I've never been like in a lucid state, in the midst of a, of this, of a, of a situation. I've been on plenty of moments with people when that happens and have felt it in real space. But it's just really beautiful what you described in this sort of no space time, linear, um, experience within not even being in the, in the same place.

[00:20:46] Dr. Nasha: So I hope that what people hear when they hear this is that we actually all have the ability. To tap into this, whether you do it knowingly or unknowingly. And that also Dr. Deming, when I think is so beautiful, is it [00:21:00] sounds like it shifted, it helped you cut your own tether, sort of pop your own tent, you know, stakes that you were kind of hearing pop as, as misty transition.

[00:21:10] Dr. Nasha: But it sounds like it also gave you permission to fully transform into your own life.

[00:21:16] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Yes. Well it was definitely that wake up call. Like I knew that I had been ignoring, you know, this was like the big message, like, hello, wake up. And I knew that if I continued to ignore, I didn't wanna know what would be the next lesson to, to, to make this clearer for me.

[00:21:33] Dr. Katie Deming MD: So yes, absolutely it was life changing because I knew what I had to do after that.

[00:21:39] Dr. Nasha: Amazing. And you. I'm, and again, I'm making some assumptions you're teaching me as we go along here. Had you been working in the integrative or functional medicine space prior to this? So every, you were very, you know, cut of the cloth standard of care.

[00:21:55] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Oh yeah. No, a hundred percent I was that and then an inventor, you know, so I [00:22:00] was very much in the standard of care western space. And, you know, the way I describe it too is that it's like, I don't know who said this, but it's so true that you can't read the label with on the outside of a bottle from the inside.

[00:22:16] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And so I needed to leave the system so that I could really see it all the way around because when you're inside, you're so invested and so all you're tied up in all the infrastructure and everything that makes it run. So you can't really see things objectively until you get outside. And that's what my leaving was about, is I realize now.

[00:22:41] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Is that I needed to be able to step outside so that I could see it more clearly for what it is. But then it just shifted completely how I saw it about healing, obviously once I stepped outside.

[00:22:53] Dr. Nasha: I love it. And one of the things I think is really beautiful that you have alluded to here in also other interviews that I've heard you do, [00:23:00] you did not throw out your training.

[00:23:05] Dr. Nasha: It's still very part, much part of you. You've just added more nuance and more layers and a deeper understanding through your own lens to to what you already, like you said, you committed so much of your time, your energy, your resources, your expertise to you just developed your toolkit even further, really.

[00:23:23] Dr. Nasha: Exactly. Totally amazing. Amazing. I, I've alluded to this TED Talk that I'm hoping everyone will rush out and listen to, you know, probably what 18 minutes of one of the most beautiful conversations I've heard in the realm of cancer, just, you know, topics in the TED Talk space. So I wanna applaud you there.

[00:23:42] Dr. Nasha: But the things that really resonated with me, I mean, first of all, I hope that you tell the story that you share of your mother in that TED talk, which I think is fascinating. But the piece that really caught my attention then, as well as when I listened to it again, is language matters, semantics [00:24:00] matter, and the way we frame our language to whomever we're speaking with matters.

[00:24:06] Dr. Nasha: And one thing that really stood out to me through my own journey, I have been one of those folks who feel like fingernails going down a chalkboard when someone tries to call me a survivor. And I think that's one of the things that drew me into you the most when I first heard your Ted Talk was I, I am kind of a little bit.

[00:24:23] Dr. Nasha: Felt like assertive or aggressive when that comes up to explain it. And one of the things that I had to listen to again was that you explain that, and this is so true, that when we use the term survivor in standard of care we're we are speaking to the moment somebody's diagnosed to the moment they pass on, it's sort of this weird bumper or guardrail defined space and it really kind of tries to o hover over and define someone or create certain boundaries that are not, I guess, true boundaries.

[00:24:55] Dr. Nasha: And so I found that very interesting and then you kind of went through a few other examples of [00:25:00] what the connotation of survivor means. I'd love for you to speak to that research. I thought that was fascinating. And then even the way you show up, because I also really appreciate that you, you also said there's not a single way to phrase it, that you really have to meet somebody where they are and ask the questions of how they need.

[00:25:18] Dr. Nasha: To be spoken with or spoken to. So can you give a little bit, I know people are gonna go listen to this, but from that, maybe talk about this, the word survivor in some of the research you did, and then perhaps share how that really brought your mother right into the fold of this conversation.

[00:25:34] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Sure. So this topic actually was not on my radar at all until as a healthcare leader, and we were redesigning the cancer care program at my organization.

[00:25:48] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And whenever I designed, I always had patients at the table. And actually that was rare at the time. So this was back in 2013 when people didn't have patient advisory [00:26:00] councils. I had an advisory council that had patients and caregivers who were experiencing in the care. And I, and that was really important to me.

[00:26:08] Dr. Katie Deming MD: So we were having a meeting with the patient advisors, and we were talking about the survivorship program. Which survivorship program for your listeners is just basically the care that is, it's a description for care after someone has completed active therapy and now they're in surveillance, they call it survivorship.

[00:26:27] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And one of the women, the advisors said, I hate that word. And I was so confused because I was like, what, what, what, what did I say? Like, I was like, what word are you talking about? Like, and, and she said, survivor. And my, oh my gosh. All of a sudden I'm like, oh my gosh, how many times have I said this word?

[00:26:46] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And what is like, what's she gonna tell me? Like. I didn't, I hadn't thought about it, that this could be upsetting. And she said, well, first of all, this survivor clinic that you're talking about, I never get to go to because I have stage four. [00:27:00] And when you have stage four, you're never gonna get to go into the survivorship survivorship clinic.

[00:27:04] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And I was like, ouch. I was like, yes, she's so correct. And then she said, and by the way, you call me a survivor and I'm going to die with my cancer. So how is that fair? Like how do you get to choose to call me a survivor when I'm not gonna survive my cancer? Wow. And then what happened was, is that around the table, people started speaking up and saying, you know what?

[00:27:29] Dr. Katie Deming MD: I also don't like that word, but I like it for, I don't like it for a totally different reason because I had DCIS and I feel like I didn't deserve it, and then it makes me feel guilty. And then so all of these different opinions started coming out that I realized there's something here to study. And there are other.

[00:27:46] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Publications that have been done looking generally like what are people's impressions of the term survivor? But I gathered colleagues that I had from around the country and we ended up doing a study with Susan Love's Army of Women. And so it was [00:28:00] with win-win with breast cancer and looking at their opinion of the term survivor and the actual opinion, whether it was positive, neutral, or negative, was just slightly positive if you took everyone in the average, which was similar to other data sets.

[00:28:18] Dr. Katie Deming MD: But when we asked why they felt the way that they felt, the data was very rich, but it was all in the comments. And what we found was that 60% of the comments were negative about the way that the term survivor made them feel. We started hearing all the things exactly like what I heard in that, you know, that table with the all the patient advisors was, you know, stage four.

[00:28:42] Dr. Katie Deming MD: It's like, how dare you call me a survivor? Or, I don't feel like I earned the term survivor, or using the term survivor makes me feel like I'm tempting fate. And you just realized that for me, what I realized through that study, which seems like a no brainer. Like how, how did I miss this? [00:29:00] But of course we don't, we don't wanna use one label to describe, you know, how many different types of conditions is cancer?

[00:29:07] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Like, I mean, you know, sometimes people say 200, sometimes people say it's like 800, right? It's so many different things. How could we ever think that using one label to describe such a diverse group of people would ever be a good idea? Right? And also different stages, different types of cancers, curable, not curable.

[00:29:26] Dr. Katie Deming MD: You like all of these things. And so for me, it started to. Opened my eyes to what other language are we using that's potentially problematic. And you know, the battle language is just everywhere in the cancer space, right? Yeah. And when you think back, actually a lot of this, you know, started with Nixon's war against cancer, right?

[00:29:46] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And it makes sense actually from that standpoint of someone's trying to like, you know, lobby support for a political agenda. You want to incite fear and emotion and all of this stuff, [00:30:00] right? And then the nonprofits don't get me started on nonprofits in the cancer space. Like, I don't even know what to say.

[00:30:07] Dr. Katie Deming MD: But they're trying to sell things, right? They're trying to raise money for whatever it is. Like whether you know it's good or not good, what they're putting their money towards. They are in the business of fundraising and fundraising. You wanna pull on people's emotions, right? So using battle language in those settings makes sense because they have an agenda.

[00:30:28] Dr. Katie Deming MD: They're trying to sell an idea or have people donate money. But the problem is, is that it is has just infiltrated into all levels. Like the doctors use the language, patients use a language, family members, friends, and it's activating from a sympathetic nervous system standpoint. If you think about that.

[00:30:48] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Like, I gotta like battle, you know, and, and do the, you know, good fight. And then what if I choose to, to not fight then, then somehow that makes me, what a loser, [00:31:00] right? Like, so there's just all of these things that are, is so loaded. And when I started looking at it, I'm like, of course this makes sense. But I think the thing that I took away from all of that is that I don't know what the language is that's right for you, but we absolutely shouldn't.

[00:31:15] Dr. Katie Deming MD: We absolutely should not be using these blanket. You know, battle language or the term survivor for anyone. And that each person should be able to choose what language feels supportive and empowering for them. 'cause someone may like that battle language, it may really energize them. And great, if that is for you, I am so happy, but I don't wanna use that language if it's going to make you feel bad or that you, you know, it is basically putting you in a position where you feel like your nervous system is being activated.

[00:31:48] Dr. Katie Deming MD: As a doctor, my job is to calm the nervous system, is to help people heal, which happens in a state of pure synthetic activation and rest. So. [00:32:00] That's kind of the big thing of my TED Talk. And for those of you listening, it's just 12 minutes, so that's good. It's not a full, the big Ted is 18 minutes. So good.

[00:32:08] Dr. Katie Deming MD: It's, it's not that long. So 12 minutes is not too long. But the beautiful thing that came out of that was that my room happened to be diagnosed at the same time, like the same weekend that I was a, um, given my TED talk and started preparing for it. My mom was diagnosed with cancer and what was interesting is my biggest fear around public speaking was becoming emotional while I was speaking because I had given a, a, um, keynote talk like a couple years before and I had become emotional and I realized, I was like, I don't like that to become emotional in front of people.

[00:32:43] Dr. Katie Deming MD: So then I was like, I can talk about cancer and a TEDx talk no problem. Right? 'cause that was my thing, but all of a sudden here I was. Not only a doctor who, my career has been oncology, but now it was my mom. And so I didn't know whether I was gonna weave that into my talk or [00:33:00] not. And I didn't know how it was going to happen.

[00:33:03] Dr. Katie Deming MD: But ultimately what was beautiful is what I was teaching in that talk was how to empower your own experience and how you want your family and your loved ones to use that language. And so I had shared with my mom what I was learning and what I was planning to teach and the TEDx talk. And what was beautiful is my mom actually told my sister and my niece how she wanted them to be talking to her.

[00:33:32] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And I heard about it third hand when I was having dinner with them and, and I was telling them what my talk was about. I was like, oh, it's about battle language and this and that, and. My sister and my niece were like, oh my gosh. Okay, now it makes sense. 'cause grandma just said this to us, like she doesn't want us like battling, she's like healing and that she just wants us to leva love her while she heals.

[00:33:53] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And I was just like, aw, so beautiful to have that touch her and then touch my [00:34:00] own family. So personally.

[00:34:02] Dr. Nasha: Yeah. And actually one of the most beautiful parts of your TED talk is your emotionality, is your authenticity of, of letting us see the tenderness and the sweetness of, of sharing that story. So, so beautiful.

[00:34:16] Dr. Nasha: Um, I just, I think that's what you're, you're speaking to is just this level of authenticity and vulnerability within each of us and finding sort of the, the inroads in to how best to engage or activate that healing part of ourselves. So I just think that was so extraordinary. And you know, also before the recording, I, 'cause I didn't know.

[00:34:38] Dr. Nasha: And had not met you until like this, in this context until now. You know, I checked in on you about your mom and wondering how she was doing. And, and you know, I'm curious as someone who's also an oncologist, um, especially who had an expertise in gynecological and breast oncology, um, I wanna know how it filters through your being when you [00:35:00] lose people, even when they're healing and into dying, which I'm certain from the stories you've shared She did.

[00:35:06] Dr. Nasha: But what, it gets that close. Like, do, does it, is it different for you coming through, quote, unquote a stranger versus a, a loved one? And, and how do you metabolize that?

[00:35:17] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Yeah. Well, so what I shared with you that the audience may not know is that my mom passed just 10 months after her diagnosis. So she passed in January of 2023.

[00:35:30] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And, you know. A couple things that I'll say actually, that I learned so much through this process. But number one was that this was her experience. And so I was, I needed to be there for her experience, and I needed to not bring my own agenda, even though I, I felt like I had, you know, lots of knowledge that I could share.

[00:35:58] Dr. Katie Deming MD: It needed to be [00:36:00] what she wanted to hear, and I needed to bring it in ways that if she wanted or she didn't want it. And so that's one of the things that I really, really had to practice what I preached in that experience with my mom, because she made some decisions that I wouldn't have made for myself personally.

[00:36:20] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And then when it was painful, because the, you know, she ended up having very bad pain control and. It was, it's like one of those things where you're watching and you know what's gonna happen and you're, you know, you say, I, okay, this is what possibly could happen, but then you have to just let go. And so it was really hard.

[00:36:41] Dr. Katie Deming MD: It was really hard to watch my mom suffer unnecessarily in ways that I think were preventable. But I also understood that she needed to do it her way. Yeah. And I needed to allow that. And I, I think that that's one of the things that I really teach clients [00:37:00] and caregivers is that when some, you know, people come to me and they said, oh, my sister was diagnosed with cancer, or, you know, whatever it is.

[00:37:07] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And I always say, you need to have your own support system so that you can get your needs taken care of. So you are not putting that on the person who is sick because they have so much already. And then also. Even if you, you know, something that maybe they don't know that, that you think can help them, you have to really be respectful about what they're open to.

[00:37:33] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And so that I think was the, the biggest lesson, honestly. So humbling. So humbling. Um, but in with her passing, what was interesting and, and you talked a little bit at this, about this, um, when you're saying you, I think you got messages and dreams, but I get messages and dreams and, and actually that's how I knew my mom was dying, was actually, I started having dreams that I could [00:38:00] see that, like there was dead tissue on her chin in one of these dreams.

[00:38:05] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And I, I could tell that the cancer had spread and sure enough, the next week her scan showed that the cancer had spread. And um, it was, you know, it was a really, I understand how cancer. Just really rocks people's world in a way that, you know, I can do this every day. Like I've cared for over 5,000 patients, you know, but you just don't know until you're on the other side.

[00:38:35] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And that helpless feeling of someone that you loved being sick, but she ultimately used, um, medical aid and dying. Wow. Wow. And um, what's interesting is I actually, I live in a state, so I live in Oregon. That is, it's legal for, um, medical aid and dying. And I have helped, um, you know, even when people get, get the prescriptions, most people don't end [00:39:00] up taking it.

[00:39:00] Dr. Katie Deming MD: So I've written the prescriptions, but I've only ever had one person take it. And I was with her at the bedside when she took it, but my mom chose to do that, and actually I couldn't get there in time. Like, she ended up being in so much pain and just wanting to. Make it happen that it happened when I wasn't able to physically be there with her in person.

[00:39:22] Dr. Katie Deming MD: But I think this actually speaks to the whole shared death experience. Remember how I was saying most of the time the people are in person, but actually I'm not sure if I was there in person attending to someone that I could have that out of body because I would be so consciously paying attention to them, right?

[00:39:42] Dr. Katie Deming MD: But the beautiful thing about my mom's experience was that I knew about when the hospice nurse was coming in and my sister was gonna help her take the medication. So I went into meditation and actually I was able to help her. So that shared death [00:40:00] experience that I had had, I had used that gift again with another patient that I had had.

[00:40:05] Dr. Katie Deming MD: This was probably like six months after the first incident, you know? First my first year death experience. I had a patient who was really struggling. She was a young woman with a young daughter, didn't want to leave, you know, obviously. And so she was hanging on really tight and I was able to help her make that transition in a more peaceful way on the spiritual realm.

[00:40:27] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And so with my mom, I went into meditation when I knew she was gonna take the medication. And then it was like, I don't know, 10 or 12 minutes later I connected with her and it was her, myself and Mother Teresa and Mother Teresa was on one side of her and I was on the other side of her. And you know, I just turned her towards me and told her how much I loved her and how, you know, everything has happened exactly the way that it's meant [00:41:00] to, that there's, you know, nothing to regret.

[00:41:02] Dr. Katie Deming MD: 'cause she was. Feeling like she had wished she had done some things differently at that point. And so just reassuring her that everything has worked out exactly is the way that it's meant to, and that you know that it's time. And so Mother Teresa turned her towards her and then actually unzipped her. So it was like a zipper that she unzipped from her head down.

[00:41:27] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And then as the body started to just gently lower to the ground, this beautiful light just emerged and became one with everything. And that was her transition. And it was equally as beautiful as, you know, the shared death experience I had with Misty. And then the other one that I'd had with my patient, um, Angela.

[00:41:50] Dr. Katie Deming MD: But yeah, so in the end, in some ways, not physically being with her in person allowed me to [00:42:00] transcend, transcend. This reality and be with her is she made the transition into the spiritual realm.

[00:42:07] Dr. Nasha: It gives me such chills because you do speak so much to, um, this other part of ourselves that we often neglect or don't are, are even unaware of.

[00:42:16] Dr. Nasha: That is so much bigger than just sort of this meat suit that we carry around and our intellect that we wield, you know, which you are very clearly competent in those areas. So I just think that it's so beautiful that this, this skill came through perhaps even for this moment, you know, so it's just so incredible for that.

[00:42:36] Dr. Nasha: And you know, you, again, you came from a very standard of care, started into the functional medicine realm. And even though functional medicine can mean a million things to a million people, oftentimes it's about, you know, testing and giving supplements, but you really gravitated more to a different. In this field more into kind of the trauma resolution, emotional wellbeing, vagal nerve nervous system, [00:43:00] re-patterning.

[00:43:01] Dr. Nasha: I mean, am I understanding that to be true?

[00:43:04] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Yes. Yes. I mean, well, I think, you know, holistic healing, it involves all of that, right? And the diet is the foundation. Like you have to, you can't do the nervous system regulation and emotional work unless someone's diet is correct. Like, like, because basically they're not centered and they're not grounded.

[00:43:24] Dr. Katie Deming MD: So obviously diet and supplementation is important, but one of the things that became very clear to me when I left Western Medicine and started studying like what makes us well and what are the pieces that I was never taught about was this whole piece around emotional trauma and illness. And you know, the first study that really stood out to me was the ACE study, the adverse childhood Event study of showing.

[00:43:50] Dr. Katie Deming MD: The children who have higher incidents of trauma. So any adverse childhood event, which could be divorce, neglect, abuse, sexual, physical, you know, [00:44:00] parents, uh, having a divorce, parent incarcerated, drug abuse, all of that stuff, basically the higher the number of ACEs that they experience, the higher the incidents of cancer, which I was never taught anything about, you know, obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, lung disease.

[00:44:17] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And that to me just like blew my mind, like, how do I not know this? And I knew it though inside because my practice, I was the only female for a very long time in my radiation oncology practice. And so I got all of the women with trauma history. So I had a whole panel. I mean, I had lots and lots of people in my practice with history of trauma just because they wanted a female to examine them.

[00:44:43] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And then also I just was more sensitive to that. And so when I came out into this space, that was one area that I realized like not many people were talking about that at least doctors, you know, like especially within the standard of care for sure. You know, not talking about that at all. And you know, just [00:45:00] helping people understand how are those things connected and then that you don't have to be afraid of.

[00:45:05] Dr. Katie Deming MD: You've had trauma, but there's so many beautiful tools that you can use and subconscious work. And I just found it to be so beneficial to do that emotional work with people as they're healing as part of that process. But you know, really I'm focused on the whole picture, right? Because healing is wholeness, bringing wholeness, and that's, you know, mind, body, spirit and

[00:45:30] Dr. Nasha: emotions.

[00:45:31] Dr. Nasha: I love it. And it's interesting 'cause you know, you talk about that you weren't trained in this in medical school and yet in 1991, at the time of my diagnosis. The only information I could find was stumbling across the work of Robert er, Dr. Robert er, who was the, sort of coined the term psycho neuroimmunology.

[00:45:48] Dr. Nasha: So there was research all the way back from the 1960s, the work of Dr. Um, Lawrence Leshan and his work in, you know, cancer is Arud point in sort of the psychological traumas that [00:46:00] coincided with somewhere between like a six and a 24 month precursor to a diagnosis and his research That was ongoing. And then I stumbled across then from their work, I stumbled into Candace perch and molecules of emotion and sort of the, the pro, you know, the scientific reality of how emotions impact our immune system, our nervous system, our, you know, inflammatory processes.

[00:46:22] Dr. Nasha: And then a full 20 years before his book. Biology of Belief mm-hmm. Was, um, that was published. I was reading the research and the work of Dr. Ko, Bruce Lipton, and those were the things that I filtered through my own cancering experience. In fact, the first book I read after my diagnosis was a total accident by this unknown Dr.

[00:46:44] Dr. Nasha: Deepak Chopra in a book called Qu. And How funny. So it's wild that what blows my mind is that was 1991, you started making this change in, you know, a decade to 15 years later in your own process. [00:47:00] But that information has been out there, it just wasn't shared or talked about. Yeah. And so I love that you brought this in.

[00:47:08] Dr. Nasha: So could you take a moment and walk us through just briefly what, how you personally perceive how emotional trauma and energetic imbalances may contribute to a cancer diagnosis and, and how addressing it might contribute to a healing. Sure. Well, I love that you brought up

[00:47:28] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Bruce Lipton because, and this is, this is mind boggling to me.

[00:47:33] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Yes. 1991. This is 2022. When I, so 30 something years later is when I was learning this, which is so embarrassing, and I'm not ashamed to admit it, that we're not taught it, just like we're not taught anything about nutrition in medical school. Right. So it's like, yeah, it's crazy that this has always been there.

[00:47:54] Dr. Katie Deming MD: It's just what we are taught. So for me, you know, this has been evolving. So [00:48:00] Bruce Lipton actually has played a big role in the way that I think about emotions and, um, healing. So, psych K, he talks a lot about psych K in biology belief, and actually psych K is the reason why he wrote biology A belief because.

[00:48:16] Dr. Katie Deming MD: He was so afraid of writing that book because he had, you know, he was doing stem cell research and talking about the mind as the environment. Our thoughts as the environment for the cells was like super out there, right when he was gonna write that book. And so he didn't wanna do it 'cause he's like, I'm gonna be kicked out of the tribe and made fun of, and ridiculed and all the things.

[00:48:36] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And he used psych K to reprogram his subconscious mind to become balanced around that and become whole brained around this idea of, you know, sharing this broader truth around epigenetics and how our thoughts affect our bodies physically. So, you know, for me, when I made the transition out of Western [00:49:00] Medicine, I actually used Psyche Wow.

[00:49:03] Dr. Katie Deming MD: As a means for me to shift all of those subconscious beliefs that had been ingrained in me about what cancer was, what I was supposed to be doing with my life, all of those things. And so. Psych K had been so powerful for me that when I started my practice, I started sending my clients to the psych K practitioner that I had been working with.

[00:49:26] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Amazing. And the results is what drove me. I was like, I just was like, okay, let me see what happens. I'm gonna send them, because you know, Bruce Lipton talks about this. And I was like, I don't know, because I told you I didn't go to do some training. I had so much training. But I was like, I'm gonna learn this way.

[00:49:43] Dr. Katie Deming MD: I'm gonna develop my own art and I'm gonna, you know, learn about the things that are important for me and then, you know, dive in and do training based on that, but not some big program that's just gonna tell me what to do. And so I learned this by watching the results that my clients got by doing Psych [00:50:00] K.

[00:50:00] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And it was phenomenal because, you know. Trauma, like people can be in therapy for years and years and years and not make progress on things, right? And in psych K, you can do one or two sessions and people will say, I feel lighter, I feel better. And that's really when someone's sick, you don't wanna dig up all their traumas, you wanna make them lighter so that they're more likely to heal.

[00:50:24] Dr. Katie Deming MD: So it basically was me really seeing what was working and, and then, you know, starting to incorporate. And the other thing that's come up for me is German new medicine. And I'm not trained, right? Yeah. Yes. So I'm not, I haven't done full training in German new medicine. But the idea with German new medicine, for your listeners who may not be, um, familiar with it, with German new medicine, this was created by Dr.

[00:50:54] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Er, who was a German internist, who he developed testicular cancer shortly after his son was [00:51:00] tragically killed. When he was 18, his son was 18 years old, and he developed this testicular cancer and he said, there has to be a connection. I was perfectly healthy before that. And he started paying attention to people who were admitted to his word on internal medicine and seeing if there was a correlation between emotional trauma and cancer.

[00:51:19] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And he saw, yes, there was a correlation, but also there was a correlation between specific types of traumas and specific types of cancer. And he developed this framework that the concept is, is that when we experience a shocking emotional event, it is perceived by the brain. And then the brain runs a biologically adaptive program to protect us from the shock so that we can survive.

[00:51:45] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And it sends these programs to the organ that is associated with that part of the brain to do something in response. So let's just say it's a separation loss of a woman being worried that her baby is gonna die well. One of [00:52:00] the things that she can do to ensure the survival of the child is to produce more milk, right?

[00:52:05] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And so this is like an example of German new medicine. You experience some shocking conflict of a baby, you know, almost dying. And then the woman develops this tumor in her breast. And it's actually an adaptive response. And for me, what I, you know, Germany in medicine really helped me think about trauma from a different lens because then you don't have to be afraid of your body.

[00:52:30] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Like so many women that I see, because most of my practice is women, is that they, they're afraid of stress now. 'cause they're like, well, any stress is gonna make me sick and trauma causes cancer. And, but the thing is, when you understand that no, your body always is trying to protect you. You don't have to be afraid of living.

[00:52:48] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And obviously we live in a world where there's lots of stress and traumas, big Ts and little Ts, but it's developing that resilience. Then also working through when you [00:53:00] have a conflict recognizing, oh, this is an emotional conflict. It's important for my physical health to work through that on an emotional level so that then my body doesn't have to do work to protect myself.

[00:53:10] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Beautiful. So I really don't have like, I know exactly like this is how emotions cause illness, but I can say I've found some really beautiful pieces that work, like Psyche is just a really simple, beautiful tool that can be used. I think German new medicine is like a nice way to think about it. Like if, you know, if it fits within that context of like, oh, this is a way that my body was doing exactly what it's designed to do.

[00:53:39] Dr. Katie Deming MD: It hasn't gone haywire or abandoned me or, you know, any of that stuff. So for me, you know, that's, that's, I'm still learning. And I think that there's so much more for us to learn about emotions and healing.

[00:53:52] Dr. Nasha: I love that. And I think that, you know, so these pa what you're talking about is kind of the pattern recognition and, and we evolve from storytelling [00:54:00] and these types of things you're describing are ways of understanding our biography and how it translates into our biology.

[00:54:09] Dr. Nasha: And it allows us to create a new, like write a different story or write a different ending to that story based on that information. And so I think that's really powerful. You speak to don't let that, don't be afraid of it and not look at it. Write a new story with it. Yes. Which I think is so, so powerful.

[00:54:23] Dr. Nasha: And you, you also spoke to just like this treating of the whole being. And one other place that I think we have such resonance is that we really love, like food as medicine or lack of food. If, if it were as medicine and you really bring fasting. And I love it. I mean, my gosh, that was also part of my early strategy accidentally a full bowel blockage from an ovarian cancer diagnosis in 1991 forced me into fasting, which became an ongoing tool in my life for the past 35 years, 34 years, right.

[00:54:50] Dr. Nasha: But it's been a tool that has been really, in fact, we're facilitating a three day water fast among our, our community right now, globally. And so it's such a powerful [00:55:00] reset, and you don't just use it as a physical or immunological or microbiome reset. You also fully bring out the potential of the emotional and the spiritual reset that this brings.

[00:55:13] Dr. Nasha: Can you talk about how you integrate this sort of trauma awareness into your fasting programs with your patients and do so without retraumatizing them along the way? Yeah. So

[00:55:26] Dr. Katie Deming MD: I started doing prolonged water fasting, just kind of with occasional. Clients who were interested because I, I work with a, a very, very powerful medicine man who teaches healing in the ancient ways.

[00:55:44] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And he's the one who brought it to me. He said, you know, if you fasted for, he started like small, he was like, if you fast for nine days, did you know that you could get tumors to start to shrink? And I was like, wow, that sounds crazy. And then the next thing is like a month later, he's like, and if you fast 30 days, you [00:56:00] could make cancer go away completely.

[00:56:01] Dr. Katie Deming MD: I was, I just did not, it sounded so absurd to me that I was like, that is crazy. Like who is gonna do that? Right? But then he kept bringing it up and when he's bringing things up, I'm like, okay, I gotta pay attention. So then I had a client who was interested in doing a water fast. She was traveling, she had a trip planned so we could only do 17 days, but she had breast cancer with a brain metastases.

[00:56:26] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And she had had radiosurgery, which is high dose radiation into the tumor bed. And then she started working with me. And we basically changed her diet, you know, did supplements, emotional work. And then we did this water fast. And at the end of the water fast, three months later, she had her MRI with the neurosurgeon.

[00:56:46] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And the neurosurgeon was like, the tumor's gone, you know, really confused. And she's like, yay. Like the, isn't that what you want? Like, she was like, of course. Like, isn't that great? And he is like, yeah, but you don't know. This is, this is not [00:57:00] normal. So after radiosurgery, you would expect actually at like, even up to six months that the tumor would be slightly bigger but less contrast enhancing.

[00:57:08] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And then it would fade over time. But you would always see some tumor in there. And that also you'd get radiation necrosis, which is damage of the brain tissue from the radiation. And her scan was completely clear, like pristine, like as if there had never been a cancer there. And so it wasn't until I saw the scan that I was like, oh, that's why he's confused as this is not normal.

[00:57:30] Dr. Katie Deming MD: So for me, I was like, this is incredible. Right. It was incredible. And what happened with her was that she had this moment when she got to 17 days where she knew, like she knew, it was almost like she's like, I felt like I had been struck by something. I knew that it was gone. Wow. And also, she knew what she was supposed to do with her life.

[00:57:52] Dr. Katie Deming MD: So it was like, these two things converged on her at once, where she'd gotten this message like two years before about mindset coaching, [00:58:00] but she had ignored it 'cause it didn't fit with her current business. Wow. And um, so she basically had this, you know, complete revelation around her career. And then the cancer was gone.

[00:58:14] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And so then I was intrigued and I, I was like, okay, you know, can I do this? And then I saw there other centers that did it. So initially I started sending people to some of the centers that do this or some of the people who do remote fasting. But the problem was, and I'm gonna get to your question about how does the emotional, but this all plays in, is that the refeeding is all plant-based.

[00:58:38] Dr. Nasha: Yeah. You gotta be really careful with that.

[00:58:40] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Yeah. So, and, and I mean, it's fine, right? 'cause that's what these centers, that's what they're focused on and that's the diet that they're teaching. But for people with cancer to have their microbiome reset in this beautiful way and then totally cleaned out and mebo metabolically reset and then all of a sudden they're drinking like [00:59:00] watermelon juice.

[00:59:00] Dr. Katie Deming MD: I'm like, oh no, I'm like covering my eyes, like I don't wanna see this. And then that's when I realized, I'm like, oh Katie, you have to do this. Like you have to actually supervise this because people need, can people who are fasting for cancer need something different? And so that's when I started fasting, and it's only been actually this year in 2025.

[00:59:22] Dr. Katie Deming MD: So I started doing fasting people in groups. And the group aspect is so powerful too, because they support each other. And so, you know, it's with the fasting, of course, the first thing is getting into ketosis, which is amazing. So that's great. And then they start dumping the toxins. So then they start detoxing, like around day four usually is like day four to seven, you have more of the detox symptoms.

[00:59:51] Dr. Katie Deming MD: But then at day seven, the PHA G sets in where the body then prioritizes disease tissue. And so it [01:00:00] flips the script on cancer, we think of cancer as a parasite that's, you know, feeding off the host, which is the human. But when you get into this, you know, prolonged water fasting, you're basically flipping the script and the body is now using disease tissue like tumors for its fuel.

[01:00:18] Dr. Katie Deming MD: So, you know, that's the reason why I started doing this 'cause of the autophagy. And then I knew with the refeeding that they needed something different. But what's happened with my people who are fasting in a group is the energy is held by my mentor. So my mentor is a very powerful healer. And for those people who are familiar with the Carlos Castaneda books from the 1960s and seventies, Carlos Castaneda was an anthropologist who reportedly apprenticed with Don Juan.

[01:00:49] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Who Don Juan Matus was a very powerful sorcerer and shaman, an illuminated being the performed miracles and illuminated being. The truth is, is that Carlos never [01:01:00] met Don Juan and Carlos never apprenticed with Don Juan. Those stories were actually written by a 14-year-old boy who was the apprentice of Don Juan, and that boy is now a 70-year-old man, and that is my mentor.

[01:01:12] Dr. Katie Deming MD: His name is Don Javier with an X. You would never find him on the internet, so if you went to search him, people will not find him. You will not find a person like this unless you want them to find they, they want you to find them, but he supports the energy and the frequency for my ERs and then those who are open to it, he works on their light body through elements.

[01:01:33] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And the stuff that is happening on an emotional and spiritual level for my pastors is way more powerful and valuable than autophagy. And I, I mean, I say that with all due respect. Like it's amazing if we can make tumors go away, but to have people overcome their fear, receive messages about what this diagnosis was about, see their light body, you know, like one of my clients [01:02:00] actually in the middle of the night, she could unzip her body and watch her light body dance around the room and, you know, receiving messages from God, like get a pen and paper and just these beautiful divine messages.

[01:02:12] Dr. Katie Deming MD: That is not anything I expected, but just been the most beautiful. Gift, you know, for me to witness.

[01:02:21] Dr. Nasha: Well, I love that you're saying like this is your unfolding as well and these experiences, what you're describing right now, you are only tapping into just this year and just where will this be a year from now and two years from now, five years from now, Jordan, 10 years from now.

[01:02:34] Dr. Nasha: I can't wait to see where it goes. But what I think is so extraordinary is you something in, you opened up in the last, you know, period of time that is allowing you to be a conduit, to bring another level of healing. Waving in the best of both worlds of what standard of care and what these ancient healing practices have to offer.

[01:02:57] Dr. Nasha: Things that we were divinely [01:03:00] wired to work with. You know, the elements of the elements in general water in particular. I know that's one of your jams. I'm hoping people follow you further for there we might. Get you back in for more conversations around that topic alone. I love that you tapped into some of these people, these names, these places for people to go read more about, like Drer's work.

[01:03:20] Dr. Nasha: Um, even Carlos Castaneda's, um, writings of the Times. This is not, this is not new, and yet it's being accessed differently and may maybe humanity is finally ready to hear it or look at it in a different way because we are sicker than ever and this the tools that we had available or that we allowed to be available have stopped serving us in a, in a meaningful way.

[01:03:46] Dr. Nasha: And so some people may hear this and be like, oh, this really went really esoteric. Woo woo. But here you guys, I need to reiterate, this is a Duke trained radiation oncologist who took her craft as far [01:04:00] as it would take her, and had some other experiences that helped open her up to. More tools to bring to the, um, to serve her patients and those that are called to work with her.

[01:04:11] Dr. Nasha: And so, Dr. Deming, I just, I just wanna honor you and your courage, you know, and, and your own, like, it took Dr. Bur Lipton 20 years to be courageous enough through the work he did to get the, his amazing work into the world. I love that it's taken you a condensed amount of time to do the same. I can't wait to learn more and experience more of what it is that you are learning and teaching all of us.

[01:04:34] Dr. Nasha: And I'm just really honored to have this conversation. And if you had to offer up some sort of, you know, words of wisdom and taking us away from here, first of all, where can people learn more about you and get access to all of your beautiful offerings? And second of all, where might you recommend someone begins to start to tap into their own gifts?

[01:04:57] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Sure. So you can find [01:05:00] me@katiedeming.com. I also have a podcast called Board Heal, where I share, I bring on experts and share things that I feel like I was, should have been taught in medical school and wasn't. So I bring my listeners on a journey. I, I definitely don't know everything I'm learning right along with them.

[01:05:16] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And, you know, what I would say is we are all intuitive, but it's the noise that keeps us from hearing that little voice and actually looking at Kelly Turner's work of Radical Remissions. You know, there are 10 things that people who heal themselves without conventional therapy. And one of those things that they do is follow their intuition.

[01:05:40] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And I would say that everybody has that voice inside and, and knows what is right for their body. Even with all of the experience that I have of, you know, very deep knowledge of conventional therapy and then coming out and fanning the spectrum and, you know, going completely natural, [01:06:00] I don't know what is right for you, right?

[01:06:03] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Like you only, you know what's right for you. And trusting that, trusting that little voice, trusting something inside of you is saying, Nope, this isn't right. Like this doctor's not for me, or this treatment's not for me. Trust that, and then go find something else. And because, and the other thing that I'll say is that your intuition will often make no sense.

[01:06:25] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Kind of like my intuition was like, you have to leave radiation oncology. But I'm like, this makes no sense. I've been training till I was 32. And so understanding that your intuition is likely not gonna make rational sense, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't trust it. And really listening deeply to yourself if you're on a healing journey.

[01:06:46] Dr. Katie Deming MD: The best thing that I can tell you to do is to listen to yourself and protect that knowing, you know, and really foster it and, and use this experience to get to know yourself better. 'cause that's what we're here to do. [01:07:00]

[01:07:00] Dr. Nasha: So beautiful. What an absolute gift that you are. I thank you so much for your time, your expertise, your passion, and your purpose, Dr.

[01:07:07] Dr. Nasha: Jamming, it's been an absolute delight.

[01:07:09] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Thank you. Dr. Wis is so nice to spend time with you.