Episode 144 | Mistletoe: The Cancer Therapy OUT OF REACH in America | ft. Dr. Nasha Winters

[00:00:00] Dr. Katie Deming: In this episode, you'll discover the most studied alternative cancer therapy in the world, used everywhere except the one country that still calls it illegal. 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 [00:00:30] host, Dr.

[00:00:30] Dr. Katie Deming: Katie Deming. Today, I'm joined by Dr. Nasha Winters, a globally recognized authority in integrative oncology, bestselling author, and the co-author of “Mistletoe: And the Emerging Future of Integrative Oncology,” who has personally trained hundreds of physicians in mistletoe therapy.

[00:00:48] Dr. Katie Deming: In our conversation, you'll learn why mistletoe is the most studied alternative cancer therapy in the world, yet remains illegal in the United States while it's still standard [00:01:00] across Europe, South America, and beyond. You'll also discover how this single plant works on three levels at once, directly on the tumor, on the immune system, and on the body's whole terrain, and why that matters for anyone in or after treatment.

[00:01:17] Dr. Katie Deming: And finally, the one phenomenon every patient and clinician needs to understand before they image someone who is using mistletoe and risk making a life-altering decision based on [00:01:30] information that isn't real. Let's dive in. Dr. Nasha Winters, welcome back to the show. It's a privilege to have you

[00:01:38] Dr. Nasha Winters: Oh, it's so good to be here with you

[00:01:39] Dr. Nasha Winters: And we should've been recording before we even recorded because there's always amazing conversations happening before we start talking.

[00:01:47] Dr. Katie Deming: Absolutely. I was thinking that same thing. I'm like, “Gosh, we should be recording this conversation. It's so interesting.” But we're gonna record this conversation, and so I love it. so Nasha, you know, today having, I'm having you on to talk about [00:02:00] mistletoe therapy. You've written a book on mistletoe therapy.

[00:02:02] Dr. Katie Deming: You've used it personally, and you also have used it and trained physicians as well in using this tool. And so, we're gonna start with the basics, right? ‘Cause I think some people are hearing mistletoe, they're thinking like a Christmas, you know, uh, decoration. Yeah, kissing under the mistletoe.

[00:02:19] Dr. Katie Deming: W- what is this therapy? Why are you so interested in this therapy, and what is it?

[00:02:24] Dr. Nasha Winters: Perfect. Well, mistletoe, first of all, mistletoe, most of us have seen it. You know, it's [00:02:30] growing and if there's over 3,000 species around the world, it grows within the tree system. It never touches the ground. It has this very unique growing pattern. It grows inward towards the center versus outward towards the light.

[00:02:44] Dr. Nasha Winters: Its leaves and berries never touch the ground, and it's basically, transplanted or grafted onto the trees by bird poop, plain and simple. A very partic-particular bird, a thrush, type of bird that is basically [00:03:00] transplanting the seeds into and grafting into the branches. And it takes a long time. It takes, I think you only grow, like, two leaves a year.

[00:03:08] Dr. Nasha Winters: It's a very slow-growing process, and it also is opposite of the other plants in nature that it, does its greenery in the summer and grows its leaves in the summer, but it fruits in the winter, which is also very opposite. So the theme that I want folks to be hearing when they hear about this amazing plant is that it's a semi-parasitic growing [00:03:30] against the typical sort of rules of nature, much like things like cancer.

[00:03:35] Dr. Nasha Winters: So there's this concept of the, like the law of similars or the doctrine of signatures, where things can look like something. When you typically see a bunch of mistletoe in a tree, it will often look like a tumor in the midst of the foliage of a tree. And so even though this plant has been around forever, for millennia, and it's been even talked about in folklore such as the Druids and [00:04:00] various even, plays of ancient times talked about the power of a sprig of mistletoe being able to take you across a threshold into the dead and be able to commune with or recover from the dead.

[00:04:14] Dr. Nasha Winters: It has this really interesting ancient mythology, and in Hippocrates' time, it was utilized for all conditions of the spleen. So we were actually talking about the spleen right before this, we started recording that, we know that as sort of the, the storage, you know, unit and the [00:04:30] creation of blood.

[00:04:31] Dr. Nasha Winters: And so that's a very interesting idea in our immune system and, and different areas there. It was also used for rheumatisms and arthritic conditions and also for pain, so migraines in particular. So it has had a long celebrated history in the plant world and the herbal world. But in the early 1900s, a character, I would say he's a character, Rudolf Steiner, even controversial in many s- many [00:05:00] schools of thought, he was a keen observer of nature, and he was a keen observer of this plant growing and thinking to himself of the doctrine of signatures.

[00:05:10] Dr. Nasha Winters: I wonder if that- thing that looks like a cancer could treat cancer. How in the world he understood the, implications of that or even how to manufacture that, how to harvest it, and how to utilize it is so fascinating to me because we've been using this medicine in the cancer space since [00:05:30] 1917 in the same form all along.

[00:05:34] Dr. Nasha Winters: So somehow he learned that if you extract some of the leaf from the summer and some of the berries from the winter and you macerate them, and then depending on s- various manufacturers, you then either do just a, like a water, infusion concoction with that or even a fermented concoction of it, and then you distill that down even further into a constituent, so it's Viscum [00:06:00] album extract.

[00:06:01] Dr. Nasha Winters: That's its, Latin name. You turn it into a constituent that then is injected subcutaneously, which is how it started in 1917 and how it's still used today. Or later, in the 1940s, we started doing intratumoral, intraperitoneal. we started doing it in other forms. But it's always been done in an injectable through IV or intratumoral or intra– or subcutaneous to avoid the breakdown of the [00:06:30] important lectins and the important viscotoxins for it to get the desired response.

[00:06:37] Dr. Nasha Winters: Now, that doesn't say that the other uses of mistletoe don't have a place, they just don't have the same cancer-fighting outcomes when you're using it in its whole plant form and in an oral application. but in the injectable form since 1917, it's had thousands of robust trials, clinical trials, 250-plus that we would consider really [00:07:00] high, value RCT clinical trials in humans that have shown this to be a very effective treatment for cancer, not as an adjunct, but for cancer.

[00:07:11] Dr. Nasha Winters: And in Europe, over 80% of patients, in especially the region of Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland, will use, mistletoe at some point during their cancer journey. The rest of Europe, 40% to 60% depending on the region. The second highest use of mistletoe in the [00:07:30] world is in South America. it's actually part of the hospital system in a pediatric oncology hospital system in São Paulo, Brazil.

[00:07:36] Dr. Nasha Winters: it's part of the formulary in Canada. It's part of the formulary in,India. And the only place that it's actually still illegal is in the good old US of A, despite there being a, a safety trial that passed its phase one clinical trial at Johns Hopkins several years back, moving into raising funds for a, a phase two clinical trial with a already promise of moving into [00:08:00] a phase three.

[00:08:01] Dr. Nasha Winters: So this is something that is not new, and yet it's also the most studied alternative cancer therapy in the world and part of a good cancer treatment strategy across the world as well

[00:08:15] Dr. Katie Deming: Wow. I just think that's amazing that it's been in use since 1917, and there are over 250, like, high-quality trials. And, and really, actually, I found, like, 1,000 trials on mistletoe. There's so [00:08:30] many trials, right? But, like, high quality, 250, and then still we're doing a phase one. Why do we need to do a phase one in the US?

[00:08:37] Dr. Katie Deming: Like, why would that need to happen, right? To establish safety when you've got randomized controlled trials, which means that's in phase three. So that to me is, amazing and also not surprising, I guess, you know, in the US since I left that system. So, how did you come into contact with mistletoe?

[00:08:53] Dr. Katie Deming: Why did you become interested in this therapy?

[00:08:56] Dr. Nasha Winters: So it's interesting when I, you know, I was diagnosed in 1991, and you and I have [00:09:00] talked a little bit about this on both each other's podcasts. So I'd heard about it when I was in my early studies of alternative medicine for mistletoe. But in 1991, and for those first decade or so, it was impossible to find.

[00:09:14] Dr. Nasha Winters: It was impossible to get my hands on. I didn't know anybody. Nobody was talking about it. There was no social media. There was no websites. There was no way to access it. I'd run across it when I was traveling in Europe, in Switzerland and Germany, in '93 and '94, but I still had no idea even how to order [00:09:30] it or what to do with it.

[00:09:31] Dr. Nasha Winters: I just knew of it. In 2003, I had this patient who came into my office who I'd been working with for a while. She had a, a very, very aggressive inflammatory breast disease cancer, and it was metastatic everywhere. It was everywhere. And she was given only weeks to live at that point, and she'd done a lot of amazing things and kept it at bay for a while, but it, she'd kind of taken a turn.

[00:09:51] Dr. Nasha Winters: And she showed up at my office with these little boxes of these little ampoules and said, “This is mistletoe. I want you to help me do it. I can't inject myself. You [00:10:00] know, you gotta do this.” Now, 2003 in Durango, Colorado, an unlicensed state for naturopathic doctors. I did have my doctorate in oriental medicine, so I was able to inject through acupuncture points via my license.

[00:10:12] Dr. Nasha Winters: So I was, eh, it was a gray area of whether or not I could actually work with this with her, and she basically gave me an ultimatum of, “I'm gonna do it with or without you. I'd for you to come along the ride.” And so I dove in to all the information I could find, and in 2003, I was astonished how much information [00:10:30] there actually was.

[00:10:31] Dr. Nasha Winters: And so Kathy was my foray into this using this medicine, feeling brave enough to use this medicine, and then I became like the hub of mistletoe for many, many hundreds and hundreds of patients for many, many years before other clinicians either came out of the woodwork that had maybe secretly been using it in various parts of the country, mostly medical MD anthroposophically trained physicians.

[00:10:56] Dr. Nasha Winters: No naturopaths were touching this with a 10-foot pole. [00:11:00] and so she was my teacher of this, and for me, ironic that I served hundreds and hundreds of patients with this therapy before I started to use it quiet- like, on myself about a decade later. It was not until about 2012, 2013, that it just occurred to me one day of, ” You of all people should be using this medicine.”

[00:11:23] Dr. Nasha Winters: And so, I started applying it to myself as well. So I've gotten to both hear about it, then be taught by [00:11:30] a patient about it, then many years l- learn, become an expert in delivering it to patients, and then finally applying it to myself. It's just a crazy, crazy journey along the way.

[00:11:41] Dr. Katie Deming: I definitely hear you on that. It's like the, the necessity is the mother of all invention, right? And, and someone who was desperate brought your attention to this, and thank goodness that she did, right? Because then you realize, wow, this is a therapy that we can be using. And it's interesting that you ment- mentioned [00:12:00] anthroposophic, doctors, because I first heard about mistletoe actually with Tom Cowan.

[00:12:03] Dr. Katie Deming: So Tom Cowan, I've spent some time with him, and his staff, joining their weekly staff meetings, and he knew quite a bit about it just because he's had a long, history of experience with it. So, that makes sense to me, and also obviously with the Rudolf Steiner connection that anthroposophical doctors would be interested in this therapy.

[00:12:22] Dr. Katie Deming: But fascinating story how all of this came about, and then specifically, you know, for you and in your career. So I wonder, [00:12:30] you know, people… can you tell us about the mechanism? Because there's a couple of things at work here, one with the immune system, and then one directly with the tumor. Can you talk about those?

[00:12:40] Dr. Katie Deming: What is the mechanism of how mistletoe works?

[00:12:42] Dr. Nasha Winters: So what it has been most studied to do, so sort of the outcome that we've seen, is it's very, very powerful to support the bone marrow during other oxytive therapy treatments, so specifically radiation, chemotherapy. This therapy has never been [00:13:00] considered contraindicated with standard of care. This is one of my favorite reasons to use this medicine because it's actually a standard of care helper.

[00:13:10] Dr. Nasha Winters: It really, really… It just really enhances the effect. So that we've a- been able to tell that it has impact. We know that when we're subcutaneously injecting this, that we're engaging these plant lectins and these viscotoxins. These are some of the extr- particular constituents of the, of the, [00:13:30] extract that are interfacing with the B cells.

[00:13:33] Dr. Nasha Winters: The B cells of our immune system are in this sort of subcutaneous lay- layer. So we can access that and create not just a local reaction, 'cause it's typically in- injected a couple times a week and rotating sites, usually around the abdomen is the most common way to apply it. But it can be, injected in other parts of the body, but it's just that's where we mostly inject it.

[00:13:57] Dr. Nasha Winters: But it has this w- is known as an abscopal [00:14:00] effect, so it can stimulate a reaction of, you know, if even if you put it in your stomach, it's telling the little cells, B cells in your toe to get to, get to work. And so this is a really powerful way to harness an, a systemic immune response that is both, looking at surveillance of the system to direct various things like macrophages and whatnot to do their job to break down what shouldn't be there.

[00:14:27] Dr. Nasha Winters: But it also stimulates things like natural killer [00:14:30] cells and T cells to do their job to actually combat directly, a direct cytotoxic impact on whatever they're seeing. And then it also,creates kind of that memory aspect that says, “Hey, you shouldn't be here. I remember you from the last time.” So I talk about the, the remember…

[00:14:45] Dr. Nasha Winters: or excuse me, the recognize, respond, and remember. Those are the three main Patterns of our immune system, and mistletoe is shown to have a mechanism in each of those three Rs. And so I think that's really, really fascinating that we're using it that way. [00:15:00] It's also shown very, very explicitly to lower ve- vaso endothelial growth factor to the tumor while not affecting the vaso endothelial growth factor to the other tissues of the body that are desired.

[00:15:12] Dr. Nasha Winters: We want new vasculature to grow in healthy parts of our body. We don't want it to grow or be sequestered by the tumor. And so there's sort of this smart effect, this sort of modulating effect that's like, “You're not supposed to grow here, but you're supposed to grow here.” So it does that. It also has a direct [00:15:30] impact on various cytokines of inflammation, so it will directly lower interleukin 6, which on your labs might lower things like C-reactive protein is what we'll typically see.those are just some of the big, big examples. And then it also has some, both cardioprotective, nephroprotective, and hepatic protective, so basically a support for the, the most important organs that keep you alive, your heart, your liver, your kidney. It has some very supportive, actions there as well.

[00:15:58] Dr. Nasha Winters: And I [00:16:00] co-authored a book a few years ago in 2021 with some of my, some of my teachers in the field of anthroposophical medicine and of mistletoe use. I think collectively between the seven of the authors, we have over 200 years of experience with mistletoe between us. and so writing in the book is loaded with the references specific to the physiologic sort of scientific explanation of the mechanism of action.

[00:16:24] Dr. Nasha Winters: But what we see time and again is that, yes, we can see things on labs of how they're [00:16:30] changing. we can see the lowering inflammation. We can see the enhancement and the modulation of the immune response. We can see pr- the bone marrow recovering or staying stable throughout standard of care treatments.

[00:16:39] Dr. Nasha Winters: But the biggest, biggest reason any of us really use mistletoe is for the quality of life of the patient. So there's multiple studies about its use in cancer fatigue, which is real for the actual cancer diagnosis itself, but then also the treatment of cancer can create this relentless fatigue process, right?

[00:16:58] Dr. Nasha Winters: That our patients, like [00:17:00] that's where they can give up. So that's a really powerful way that it really enhances their vitality. The patients just feel like they got a little hitch in their giddy up, you know, they up and running again, and they'll even notice if they skip it for a few days or, forget to take it or, or feel like, “Oh, I feel like I'm down,” or, “Maybe it's not doing anything.”

[00:17:17] Dr. Nasha Winters: That's when they notice the bigger difference 'cause it's subtle, right? Of how their quality of life is impacted. And what I have found as a clinician for all the years is that my patients that are taking the mistletoe [00:17:30] alongside the standard of care, be it other immune therapies, be it radiation, chemotherapy, targeted therapies, these patients are able to get through their treatments at the right cadence.

[00:17:41] Dr. Nasha Winters: They're not needing to take unnecessary breaks because their bone marrow is destroyed or they're just getting a- so many adverse reactions to standard of care. So it really smooths the trip through standard of care, and to me is just ridiculous that it's not a given, treatment support for all patients going through a cancer diagnosis [00:18:00] and cancer treatment.

[00:18:01] Dr. Katie Deming: and I'm thinking, you know, as a radiation oncologist, never heard of it. Never. Like, in my career, never heard of that as an option to help, reduce side effects, which, I mean, that is our whole goal is to, broaden the therapeutic window so that you can actually give the therapy that you need to give and get fewer side effects.

[00:18:21] Dr. Katie Deming: And so it sounds like mistletoe is one of those therapies that can be given. And let me ask you a question, just because I am fascinated with all things fasting [00:18:30] too. You know, there's the benefit of fasting around chemotherapy. Can people do mistletoe while they're fasting as well? Can you talk about that a little bit?

[00:18:38] Dr. Nasha Winters: Absolutely. In fact,there's another mechanism of action when I started digging deeper into the literature, especially getting ready for the book, the mistletoe book, and m- my focus being in metabolic oncology, I started running across studies of its impact on the process of glycolysis and its impact directly on the lactate to pyruvate ratio.

[00:18:57] Dr. Nasha Winters: And then there's a form of a Korean mistletoe that's [00:19:00] been used for decades for a diabetes treatment. And then my, curiosity was like “Why have I not thought about this?” So I started paying more attention with my patients and started l- tracking. So I was always tracking their immune markers, like their CBCs, their interleukin-6s and 8s, their VEGFs.

[00:19:16] Dr. Nasha Winters: I was always tracking those. And I was always tracking the metabolic, but I wasn't correlating or connecting the response. So we could see on continuous glucose monitors, on ketone blood testing, on, [00:19:30] insulin, insulin growth factor, A- hemoglobin A1c, C-peptides, we would literally be able to see that the blood sugar started to stabilize the moment they introduced the mistletoe.

[00:19:41] Dr. Nasha Winters: So it was like this added side effect to see that it was potentiating or supporting the metabolic approach. So because almost, well, myself included, and all the patients I ever worked with, we always fasted them around chemotherapy, hyperbaric oxygen, radiation therapy, had them in a deep state of ketosis.[00:20:00]

[00:20:00] Dr. Nasha Winters: What I was finding is when we continued with their normal pattern of taking the mistletoe every other day is pretty typical or every third day is really typical, they would be doing that three to five-day water fast around their chemotherapy. They would actually– They could tell the difference when they were taking their mistletoe that they were more stable and it seemed like effortless in their fasting.

[00:20:23] Dr. Nasha Winters: So I think that was speaking a lot to sort of that, stabilizing of the blood sugar effect that it seems [00:20:30] to have, and that was just an accident. You know? It was like,

[00:20:34] Dr. Nasha Winters: how

[00:20:34] Dr. Katie Deming: like lots of accidents

[00:20:35] Dr. Katie Deming: along this road that… I mean, this is honestly, that's how I feel like we learn, especially, you know, given in the United States that something like this has been suppressed. We're not being exposed to those things, so you kind of have to find these things, and you have to be really curious.

[00:20:50] Dr. Katie Deming: You know, and I love that you're so curious about caring for the people, you know, that you took care of, but then also all the clinicians that you train to really be [00:21:00] investigating these little things, because otherwise we're not taught it. So yeah, that, that's amazing. and it just like all works together.

[00:21:08] Dr. Katie Deming: So basically what I'm hearing from you is that anyone who's doing conventional therapy that's listening to my podcast anyway because th- they're interested in, you know, how you can get better results or, you know, do less of those conventional therapies, basically I'm hearing that everyone should be considering mistletoe as part of…

[00:21:24] Dr. Katie Deming: Is there any types of cancer that this is not good for, that, you know, would, you would want to avoid it? [00:21:30] Or is this really something everyone should be considering?

[00:21:32] Dr. Nasha Winters: So it's interesting because there are some companies out there who will test a cytotoxic reaction to mistletoe in a cell line, you know, evaluation. So they'll take a blood biopsy and they'll run it against other agents to see what type ofsynthetic lethality or what, what is the kill rate of the cancer cells.

[00:21:50] Dr. Nasha Winters: And there will definitely be some cancers that have a real robust response to a direct cytotoxic, meaning a direct kill of the cancer cell [00:22:00] impact of the mistletoe. I would say, if I had to guess, I would say that happens in about 10% of the cases, which might seem like a small number for the listeners, right?

[00:22:09] Dr. Nasha Winters: When you're looking at the big picture of things. What is more remarkable to me is that the real win of mistletoe is its impact on the terrain Which is then what impacts whether that tumor grows further or faster or stays stable or goes into [00:22:30] remission. And so it, to me, for the most part, is treating more of the terrain than the tumor itself, even though I have seen directly and surprisingly direct tumor shrinkage and, and tumor removal entirely just with mistletoe for patients who are like, “That's the only thing I'm gonna do.”

[00:22:46] Dr. Nasha Winters: I don't advise that, by the way, neither do any of my colleagues. But we get those patients who've done it on their own or found a way to get it on their own or do it who've had these really remarkable, robust responses. But to your question about which cancers are a fit or [00:23:00] not a fit, the beauty about mistletoe is it's, it's reperturized to the gender, to the tumor type, to the tumor location, to the aggressivity of the tumor process, and to the basically the stamina of the terrain.

[00:23:18] Dr. Nasha Winters: And also whether the person… They call this a,An anamnestic process. It's a German word that basically is a, a, an immune response, which I think is very fascinating because we look [00:23:30] at mistletoe as sort of the OG of immune therapies. And so if a patient has a current or very active or recently active autoimmune condition, we as clinicians are trained to take a little more judicious approach with the introduction of mistletoe because historically we thought it strongly pushed Th1, which is the part of the teeter-totter that pushes you into more autoimmunity, which can also be the anecdote for the Th2 process, which is the cancering process.

[00:23:59] Dr. Nasha Winters: And I'm [00:24:00] oversimplifying here 'cause there's complexity to this, but that's a simple kind of thought process. What we've since learned is that really mistletoe is more of a modulator. It's kind of hitting the center of the teeter-totter. unless you're in a full-blown or recently full-blown autoimmune condition, it's more modulating of it, not driving it further into t- into a Th1.

[00:24:20] Dr. Nasha Winters: a little side note here, which I think is very interesting, is that we were all very told in the beginning when all the immune therapies started coming out that in n-no uncertain terms were we to use mistletoe with those [00:24:30] therapies. Well, apparently I didn't get the memo, in the beginning and, I was using it and I was finding that despite the fact that over, at that time, over 80% of patients were having severe adverse events or even just sudden deaths from the immune therapies, I was having a very different reaction with my patients Because I also had them on mistletoe simultaneously.

[00:24:50] Dr. Nasha Winters: In fact, I started speaking on this in 2014 at medical conferences globally, and I had a lot of people getting up yelling at me and na- calling me, you know, like a naysayer [00:25:00] and like, could be naysayers against me on this until by 2018, a lot of people were starting to pay attention to realize, wow, maybe this is helping our patients have a better response to the immune therapies.

[00:25:12] Dr. Nasha Winters: And now it's really, like, considered just the way it always has been, right? In 2026, I don't know many o- oncology colleagues of mine who are not using the two together. Like, it's so helpful to overcome the adverse events and to, synergize the treatment, but also [00:25:30] protect that healthy tissue, 'cause so many of the conventional immune therapies overshoot their mark and really cause a lot more problems than good.

[00:25:38] Dr. Nasha Winters: So to me, mistletoe was like a gift to the immune therapy world in that it's really stabilized this process, and we can look at various labs and lymphocyte mapping tests and whatnot to know what to use. But basically, there's different types of host trees. The most common are the fir tree, which is abietis, the pine tree, which is the pini, or the [00:26:00] apple tree, which is the mali form of mistletoe.

[00:26:02] Dr. Nasha Winters: Those are the three most common. There's plenty of others out there, but those are the ones that most people are gonna read or learn about. And there's a handful of companies that are really well known in Europe, Escudor, Helixor, Abnova. In the United States, we can't get those here, so we have to utilize, a different form that is the same as Helixor in Germany, but it's being re-, packaged and relabeled here in the United States.

[00:26:27] Dr. Nasha Winters: But the rest of the world has access to those three [00:26:30] big ones I just talked about. So we'll pl- we'll plan to match the patient and their tumor process to the right host tree and then the right potency. It's a slow titrated approach. You don't just put them on a high dose and keep them on it. You start at the very lowest and you slowly incrementally bring them up, and you look for things like a little local redness and reaction or a little bit of a fever or a little bit of, like, an itching or kind of flu-y sensation.

[00:26:58] Dr. Nasha Winters: Those are desired [00:27:00] effects of the mistletoe. And so the beauty about this medicine is it's a relational medicine, and it's not a protocol. The patient's body tells us exactly what they need and exactly how fast or slow they should titrate the process. And so it's not a huge boon for clinicians to wanna use this because you have to slow her down and be with your patients a little bit longer and ask more questions and have them become more, adherent to asking more questions [00:27:30] of their own bodies.

[00:27:30] Dr. Nasha Winters: It creates a whole different relationship between the clinician and the patient and the patient and this medicine.

[00:27:38] Dr. Katie Deming: Beautiful. Well, and you said something in there that I just wanna make sure I understood. Did, did you say, you said there was something that you absolutely, you and other clinicians do not recommend. Was that intratumoral injection? Is that what you said? Or what, what was it that you said that you don't recommend?

[00:27:53] Dr. Nasha Winters: so in the United States, we have to be very, very careful here. So there are definitely clinicians in the United States who have been [00:28:00] very well trained, who've spent time in the hospitals in Germany and Switzerland. In fact, I've taken cohorts of clinicians to those hospitals to see in real time patients getting their chemotherapy down the hall, their intratumoral mistletoe in, down the hall, their high-dose IVC down the hall, their poultices from the anthroposophical world, their CT scans down the hall, their radiation.

[00:28:21] Dr. Nasha Winters: Like it's all under one roof, right? It's, they're not broken out here. And so we take doctors to actually show them that we're not, you know, charlatans or quacks and that this [00:28:30] is standard of care in many places. But there are people who I think extend their knowledge, you know, ex-extend beyond their knowledge and their, and their ability.

[00:28:38] Dr. Nasha Winters: And so you have to be very, very careful to find out that people have had really good training if they are taking you on the mistletoe journey, because we don't wanna lose access to it. And it's the wrongful application that will lose access for the millions of people who should have access to this, right?

[00:28:54] Dr. Nasha Winters: If it's like one bad apple, it's not about the medicine, it's about the practitioner. And so I really wanna be, [00:29:00] specific to that. I think what I was saying though was that today, where we were all so afraid in early g- like 2010 to 2012 of using mistletoe with the immune therapies, we were all told that was contraindicated.

[00:29:12] Dr. Nasha Winters: And then in 2014, I started sharing my experience with it. Now in 2026, I think all of us use them together who was trained in mistletoe because we see such positive outcomes compared to those who do not use mistletoe with the immune therapies that it's just like I, I don't [00:29:30] understand how it's not become just part of the standard of care.

[00:29:34] Dr. Katie Deming: So that all makes a lot of sense to me. I wanted to ask you about something, 'cause literally the only thing that I have really interacted with with mistletoe was I had a client who had pseudoprogression.

[00:29:46] Dr. Nasha Winters: Oh,

[00:29:47] Dr. Katie Deming: So I would love to have you talk about that, because occasionally I'll have someone ask me, and because mistletoe's just not ev- never been part of my practice, I don't know.

[00:29:55] Dr. Katie Deming: Um, so can you talk about what is pseudoprogression and how does this relate to mistletoe? What is, what is the [00:30:00] hubbub about this?

[00:30:01] Dr. Nasha Winters: Well, let's start with like a, a good story. So when the mistletoe trial, so 2014, the same year that I was speaking about my use of mistletoe with immune therapies, I did not realize in the audience at that time that there was a whole team there from Johns Hopkins that were looking to start a phase one clinical trial.

[00:30:19] Dr. Nasha Winters: And so about two months after the conference, because I was also doing IV with patients, and so about two months after I get a call from Dr. Luis Diaz, who was at that time the head of, of oncology and the [00:30:30] chief inves-investigator at Hopkins on this trial, basically saying, “Hey, we'd like your help in rewriting our IRB,” because they were initially going to just do subcutaneous for end-stage pancreatic patients only who had failed four different lines of treatment.

[00:30:45] Dr. Nasha Winters: Like, basically the people who were left for dead, they were going to be given liberty to do this clinical trial on for safety study. And he said, “But after going to the conference in Europe and hearing you speak and others,” he goes, “Basically, we've been watching you from afar and you haven't killed anybody, so [00:31:00] we'd like your help to, to come back to the drawing board and open this up into an intravenous study and to open it up to all solid tumor types.”

[00:31:10] Dr. Nasha Winters: And so that was where we changed it. But what was so funny is when they started within the first… And then he, shortly after the trial started, he got taken over by, got pulled over into Sloan Kettering as the head of solid tumor oncology there. Brilliant, brilliant. Loves epigenetics, loves immune therapy.

[00:31:25] Dr. Nasha Winters: He's still a huge, huge fan of integrated medicine, of, of, mistletoe therapy. He wrote the foreword for the [00:31:30] mistletoe book. Like, just a brilliant human being. But Dr. Channing Paller, who took over, amazing. She's always been interested in the natural product side of things of the oncology world. She was calling me within those first few weeks of the trial freaking out because they were doing imaging within the first like two weeks of im- of starting the treatment.

[00:31:48] Dr. Nasha Winters: And that's when I said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I– This is an important piece here. You do not wanna image or at least you wanna be aware when you're imaging somebody within the first six to eight weeks of initiating mistletoe because [00:32:00] you will see pseudo-progression.” And that pseudo-progression is that things will look bigger before they break down on the scans.

[00:32:08] Dr. Nasha Winters: And this happens in a lot of therapies. Doxorubicin does this, Gemzar can do this. but other, injectable,like even ablative, like injectable radiofrequency ablation can do that. All of the modern,immune therapies have a very, very known understanding that pseudoprogression happens, which is this concept that it can look like it's [00:32:30] getting worse before it gets better.

[00:32:31] Dr. Nasha Winters: And then there's some ways to differentiate. I've done classes on this, on like what metrics to look for in the labs and what metrics to look for in the patient's experience as well as in imaging. And that's when they redirected their scanning schedule with the mistletoe trial, and sure enough, they went back to those patients a few weeks later, re-scanned, and they had remarkable…

[00:32:51] Dr. Nasha Winters: If I recall, she was telling me somewhere between 40% and 70% reduction of the tumors. They just scanned too soon, so they were seeing the swelling. And what can happen with [00:33:00] mistletoe specifically is it can swell the lesion upwards of 40% to 70% larger in the beginning, which is why we always warn people, “If you're gonna get the scan, you need to know this.

[00:33:11] Dr. Nasha Winters: You need to educate yourself about pseudoprogression. You need to educate your team that you're doing this therapy.” and I've only had one doctor ever freak out about it, and once they realized, 'cause I said, “Scan them in a month and you'll see,” then they became like the biggest convert ever, on this?

[00:33:25] Dr. Nasha Winters: But it's incredible 'cause patients will often feel sensation in their tumor itself [00:33:30] when they start on mistletoe. And then they might be able to palpate if it was something relatively superficial, like, Yeah

[00:33:34] Dr. Nasha Winters: it is definitely a little bigger, a little more active.” And then it's almost like they wake up one morning and they're like, “I have no sensation there anymore,” or, “Wow, it's shrunk so much I can't even feel it anymore.”

[00:33:45] Dr. Nasha Winters: And so that process is really, really fascinating. That is the… All of those immune cells rushing to the tumor to do the job it was designed to do. But the tumors had gotten sneaky and cloaked [00:34:00] themselves and hid themselves, and the mistletoe helps clear away the cloak so thatall of those little immune cells can be recruited simultaneously.

[00:34:07] Dr. Nasha Winters: That is that pseudoprogression process. It's pretty

[00:34:11] Dr. Katie Deming: And so the timeline you said to imaging is like six to eight weeks at

[00:34:14] Dr. Katie Deming: least. Like what if you had someone who was doing a, a mistletoe therapy, what would your like recommendation to like really catch them at a point where it's gonna be valuable information? When would that be? Would that be

[00:34:26] Dr. Nasha Winters: My preference is I would love to have imaging right at the beginning, like right [00:34:30] before we initiate therapy and then, Three months, later. ‘Cause typically people are on like a three-month anyway. Then I'm in the zone. That's usually comfortable for the standard of care team 'cause they were gonna do that anyway, and so the timing…

[00:34:42] Dr. Nasha Winters: But I have those patients who just then learn about mistletoe or really are having a hard time on a certain therapy or, man, their bodies are tanking and they can't, their marrow can't keep up and they're not able to continue treatment and they know they need something. That's when I just do the education on the pseudoprogression and often try to get them the literature to share with their clinician [00:35:00] or happy to speak to their clinician about this process.

[00:35:02] Dr. Nasha Winters: And there's so much good data, especially in the immune therapy world, about pseudoprogression that today– Like 10 years ago, this was a difficult conversation to have 'cause it was so new, right? We weren't seeing that. But now that m- immune therapies are part of so many different cancer types and cancer experiences, this is common.

[00:35:21] Dr. Nasha Winters: You've gotta become an expert in pseudoprogression if you're working in oncology today. So now I have a common language to describe for folks. But I [00:35:30] like if I had my Withers, I'd have the three, the three-month window.

[00:35:33] Dr. Katie Deming: it's so interesting 'cause I, I'm seeing there's some overlaps here with the mistletoe and then, like, fasting. ‘Cause fasting, this is one of the things that people wanna do their imaging. They're like, “I wanna know right away,” or they wanna do all these things, like, immediate. And I'm like, this is not an immediate…

[00:35:49] Dr. Katie Deming: This is something that your bo- We're changing the terrain of your body, and it's gonna take time. And, you know, sometimes the, the tumor itself doesn't even go away, but you've completely [00:36:00] changed the terrain of the body and what's growing. And like you described here, it's like 10% tumoral response, and then, you know, 90% of it is really the terrain that you're impacting, which I feel like is the same thing.

[00:36:10] Dr. Katie Deming: And so, you know, this is what I tell people is like, “Please wait, like, six to eight weeks after this.” And with conventional therapy, when I was in radiation oncology, we would say three months, right? We would say it takes at least eight weeks for the cells to all turn over, so you need to have those cells die off before you do any imaging.

[00:36:28] Dr. Katie Deming: So 12 weeks, like you said, is [00:36:30] kind of the standard in, conventional medicine. So, this is, like, I think an important point for people to hear because they wanna know, and then they're, you know, and then they freak out. But it's like, no, I would just rather not image, and let's just, like, trust the process of whatever we're doing to actually see.

[00:36:45] Dr. Katie Deming: And in, in conventional, they definitely do that. They don't image before that because you know there's gonna be things that are, you know, not, not what they're gonna be at, like, three months. And so then you're gonna make decisions on information that's just not correct. [00:37:00] yeah, so thank you for-

[00:37:00] Dr. Nasha Winters: it's interesting. Yeah. Well, no, just like an, two more pieces on this, Piyush, that I think is really interesting. You, you've got my, my wheels turning here that, I mean, first of all, when you're in a, when you are in an active tumor kill phase, you also create… You can also create a pseudoprogression, so this tumor lysis syndrome or this cytokine response syndrome, that is a, a similar effect.

[00:37:20] Dr. Nasha Winters: You can see things like even after a biopsy. So I had a really good story about this recently of a client who just had,two nodes in her armpit and a breast lesion biopsied, [00:37:30] and when they redid her imaging, they noted that it went from, like, two centimeters to five centimeters. And so she's freaking out that it's growing, except she didn't read the fine print, which literally says, “This is a direct response of the recent biopsy she had just a few days ago.

[00:37:46] Dr. Nasha Winters: This is the inflammatory response post-biopsy.” So even then, we had urged her to get her imaging done before the biopsy, but the timing just didn't align of her learning about us and starting the process of the discussion, and so it just [00:38:00] timed terribly. When– So then she, of course, was just starting our treatment, and we're like, “Don't scan again for three months,” 'cause now we're gonna start mistletoe and other things.

[00:38:08] Dr. Nasha Winters: And she was waiting to prepare 'cause she was going down the road of h- cryoablation to treat her tumors. That was her chosen path, working with a well-known surgeon who does this work. And so before she went in to see that surgeon, she was to scan again, and lo and behold, all three of those tumors were gone. Nothing to cryoablate here, right? And she'd been [00:38:30] employing, you know, th- therapeutic ketosis, fasting, mistletoe, some, like, local treatments with just sort of like poultices and pulsatilla,or not pulsatilla,phytolacca topically with castor oil packs and just things 'cause we were preparing her for ablative therapy, you know, with cryoablation, without any expectation, none of us thinking that this would be gone in those three months.

[00:38:52] Dr. Nasha Winters: And lo and behold, it was. And part of that, I think, was there was a psychology there. There was not an expectation. [00:39:00] She was preparing her body for something else entirely. And so it was such a beautiful accident yet again. And then another interesting thing is, one I forget to tell is that patients who have initiated mistletoe therapy, even if they're th- six, eight weeks out and they're in there getting their scan, I remind them that sometimes their injection sites can show up on the imaging and it can freak them out or the clinician out.

[00:39:26] Dr. Nasha Winters: But what you'll read every single time in the fine print is it will say, “We notice [00:39:30] these lesions all over the abdomen, but they look like immune reactivity.” So when you can actually pick that up on imaging, that is telling you these powerful, powerful medicines are doing something at the immune system level.

[00:39:46] Dr. Nasha Winters: And even the pathologist is scratching, or the radiologist is scratching his head wondering what the heck he's looking at, but they're looking at an immune response in action. And then another really cool thing is that patients who've maybe started with subcutaneous who then later [00:40:00] come in for IV therapy of mistletoe, they could be getting their IV and suddenly they're like scratching on their abdomen and you're like, “Hey, lift up your shirt.”

[00:40:07] Dr. Nasha Winters: And their abdomen will basically look like a Christmas tree lit up for every place they've ever done an injection before. So that abscopal effect is re- like awakening the previous injection sites to sort of restimulate the immune system function. It's just incredibly remarkable to me, and yet it gets so little, like, screen time in the United States, [00:40:30] despite it being so, so widely used and accepted around the globe.

[00:40:34] Dr. Katie Deming: I love that, the, like, the recall of the abscopal event, it, it– is– that you can see it. You're like, “Okay, this… Like, my immune system recognizes this and is activating in these areas,” which means it's also activating the immune system in the areas that you want, which is, obviously what you're looking for with that.

[00:40:51] Dr. Katie Deming: So I, I love that. And let me ask this. Is there anyone who shouldn't be getting mistletoe? Like, who, who should be really concerned about [00:41:00] considering this? Is, is– Are there people that shouldn't do it?

[00:41:03] Dr. Nasha Winters: I would be careful if somebody is in an active autoimmune expressing state or on a new immune therapy that have, do not have an expert in using mistletoe with immune therapies. I would say table that until you find an expert to work with. So active immunity, or a new immune therapy from standard of care, please work with an expert who's got a lot of experience with mistletoe.

[00:41:25] Dr. Nasha Winters: Number two, space occupying lesions, so in the brain, in the lung, [00:41:30] in the prostate. Not all of the manufacturers are created equal, so the ones that are the fermented forms of mistletoe create a stronger… They're, they're higher in viscotoxins, so they create a stronger swelling effect, that stronger pseudoprogression, and you don't want to give that form of mistletoe to somebody who has a brain tumor, a lung tumor, or a prostate tumor, 'cause those are small cramped spaces, right?

[00:41:54] Dr. Nasha Winters: And we don't want something to swell there unnecessarily. There are other forms of mistletoe, however, that are safe to use [00:42:00] even in space occupying lesions. So again, it takes some finesse, and it's not difficult as a clinician to learn. There's online training with the Anthroposophical p- the PAM, the Physicians Association of Anthroposophical Medicine.

[00:42:11] Dr. Nasha Winters: You can go to their website and they have trainings online. We do live trainings every couple of years. We take doctors to Europe. We have another trip coming in September 2027 of a group of phys-physicians to take to these places. But when I think about otherwise, there's not a single contraindication.

[00:42:27] Dr. Nasha Winters: I've used this in as young as six-month-olds and [00:42:30] as old as 102-year-olds. I've used it in every cancer type you can imagine. I've used it in every form you can imagine, from nebulized to intratumoral to intraperitoneal to IV to subcutaneous. Again, in the right situations, the right environments. I've done those in medical, like hospital environments.

[00:42:49] Dr. Nasha Winters: it's just an incredible tool that if I had to choose two, I would choose fasting and mistletoe because they bring so much to the terrain that they give the body [00:43:00] a fighting chance that may by themselves do a lot to mitigate the tumor. But then when you have those two tools on board, whatever re- you know, oxidative therapy you bring into the mix, man, does it have a much bigger hit into the system without obliterating the system simultaneously.

[00:43:19] Dr. Katie Deming: Amazing. I've learned so much in this. This is like, I, I love this episode. I'm like, I want Na- Nasha, can you come back every month and talk about something with me?

[00:43:27] Dr. Katie Deming: Because I learn so much when I'm with [00:43:30] you. so you've written a book on this. Can you… Do you have the book that

[00:43:33] Dr. Nasha Winters: Yeah, I do. I don't know if it's upside down or upside up.

[00:43:36] Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah, Mistletoe

[00:43:36] Dr. Katie Deming: and the Emerging Future of Integrative Oncology. I love it. So we will link that book in, the show notes. But as always, what a privilege to spend time with you and learn from you, and all of your, you know, the crazy serendipities that just happen to create our careers, right? I mean, we wouldn't be where we are if, we hadn't followed those little trails.

[00:43:58] Dr. Katie Deming: I think that's, you [00:44:00] know, what we do as healers, is we go where, the energy leads us and, and where our patients need us to go to. So thank you for your work, and, always a privilege

[00:44:10] Dr. Nasha Winters: Oh my gosh, mine– my privilege

[00:44:12] Dr. Nasha Winters: entirely. Thanks, doc

[00:44:14] Dr. Katie Deming: Thank you.

[00:44:15] Dr. Nasha Winters: To summarize, here are the key points we covered today.

[00:44:18] Dr. Katie Deming: First, mistletoe isn't fringe. It's been used in the same injectable form since 1917, backed by hundreds of high-quality human trials, and it's woven [00:44:30] into the mainstream cancer care across much of the world, even as it remains out of reach here in the United States. Second, its real power is in the terrain.

[00:44:41] Dr. Katie Deming: Yes, it can act directly on the tumor, but more often it works by waking up the immune system, the recognize, respond, and remember, and supporting the whole body through conventional treatment with remarkable effects on fatigue and quality of life. And third, healing on this path takes [00:45:00] patience. Whether it's mistletoe or fasting, your body is changing from the inside out, and that's understanding things like pseudoprogression and resisting the urge to image too soon.

[00:45:12] Dr. Katie Deming: This can protect you from fear driven decisions that really aren't real. I hope you leave today's conversation with something powerful, that there's so much more available to you than you've been told, and that your body, given the right support, is far more capable of healing [00:45:30] than anyone has ever led you to believe.

[00:45:32] Dr. Katie Deming: Trust that. Trust yourself. Thank you so much for listening. I know your time and attention are valuable, and I'm so grateful you chose to spend time with me today. I release new episodes every Tuesday and look forward to connecting with you on the next episode. If you found today's episode helpful and you're ready to take radical ownership of your health today, subscribe to the Born to Heal podcast now so you don't miss the answers conventional [00:46:00] medicine never gave you.

[00:46:01] Dr. Katie Deming: And if you're ready to experience what real healing feels like from the inside out, join me for my next three-day water fast next month. The link is below. Thank you for listening, and remember, just like me, you were born to heal