Learn about the Healing Power of Prolonged Fasting: HERE
Why do two people with the same diagnosis, the same treatment, and the same odds end up with completely different outcomes?
Dr. Katie Deming practiced radiation oncology for 20 years before shifting into integrative oncology. Over and over, she saw patients breeze through the toughest treatments while others developed side effects she couldn't trace to anything medical.
She has a theory about what's really going on, and it starts with one word: frequency.
Key Takeaways:
- Your emotions may shape your health more than your plate does.
- How eating “right” out of fear can backfire.
- Belief and inner peace can change how a body responds to treatment.
- Water fasting opens a door that goes far beyond metabolism.
- The biggest shift Dr. Katie sees in her fasters isn't physical.
She draws on the work of psychiatrist David Hawkins, shares the story of a man whose daily menu would make any nutritionist cringe, and opens up about what she's learned after guiding 150 people through water fasts. The result she sees most often probably isn't the one you'd expect.
If you eat well, move your body, and still feel a low hum of worry about your health, this episode speaks to you. Dr. Katie explains how doing “all the right things” can quietly work against you, depending on the energy behind it.
You'll also hear about a woman who built her whole life around avoiding cancer, and what she discovered during a near-death experience. Her story flips a lot of common health advice on its head.
Dr. Katie describes a head and neck cancer patient who looked her in the eye during consent and said none of the expected side effects would happen to her. What happened next still stays with Dr. Katie years later.
And if you've ever thought water fasting is only about autophagy, think again. Dr. Katie explains why she considers fasting a doorway, why spiritual teachers throughout history used it, and why one of her fasters realized he'd wasted his first 14 days.
Stay until the end to hear what her fasters say they truly walk away with, and the one choice that can shape everything afterward.
Work with Dr. Katie One-on-One — a Fasting Consult to build your personalized fasting plan: https://l.bttr.to/L05ab
Or a Health & Healing Consult for a deeper conversation about your diagnosis, your options, and what’s worth exploring next: https://l.bttr.to/Abcf1
Join Dr. Katie for a three-day guided reset to slow down, listen to your body, and practice a more loving relationship with yourself—with daily live calls, expert support, and community alongside you: https://tinyurl.com/ye22r9km
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Read the Transcript Below:
[00:00:00] Dr. Katie Deming: A man eats Hostess CupCakes for breakfast and is perfectly healthy, and a woman who ate perfectly got cancer. Here's why. Welcome to Born to Heal. I'm Dr. Katie Deming, an oncologist who left Western medicine to find out what actually makes a human healthy.
[00:00:16] Dr. Katie Deming: Each week, I share what I'm learning about healing, fasting, and what it takes to become truly well. In this episode, you'll learn why a man who's eaten Hostess CupCakes for breakfast for 30 years is perfectly healthy, while a woman who did everything right got cancer. You'll also learn the framework, David Hawkins' Map of Consciousness, that explains how your emotions directly shape your body's ability to heal and why the power of a water fast isn't the tumor shrinking, it's the fear that finally lets go.
[00:00:50] Dr. Katie Deming: Let's dive in.
[00:00:51] Dr. Katie Deming: So today I wanna talk about frequency and what it has to do with health and healing. And the reason why we're gonna talk about this is because I really think that actually what I've been doing in my practice, and then more recently with fasting, has more to do with frequency than anything else. Of course, autophagy and all the beautiful things that you get metabolically from fasting are amazing.
[00:01:21] Dr. Katie Deming: But I think the real secret in what I've been doing with fasting, which is not literally just fasting, it is so much more. We have a whole transformational program that runs within my fasting program that I think is responsible actually for some of the outcomes that we see, but it's the combination of the fasting with these transformational, tools that we're teaching people that really get these outcomes.
[00:01:48] Dr. Katie Deming: And the basis of those outcomes, I think, has to do with frequency. So let me explain. I think it, the best place to start with this work is David Hawkins' work. So David Hawkins is a psychiatrist and MD PhD who studied emotions, frequency as determined by muscle testing, which we'll talk about in a little bit, but, and then levels of consciousness, and how those all tie together.
[00:02:16] Dr. Katie Deming: And in his book, “Power Versus Force,” which is an incredible book, I highly recommend this, he talks about how emotions in the low frequency range below what he claims is 200, this is courage. That is kind of his de- dividing line between low frequency emotions and higher frequency emotions. And he delineates that line because below what he calls 200 or courage, he noticed that illness was created.
[00:02:53] Dr. Katie Deming: This is the level where we create disease and contraction and things that are not of our highest good. But when you get above courage into things like love, joy, acceptance, peace, then you're in a state of what he describes as power, and this is life creating, this is health creating. And so, I, I usually like to show the map of consciousness.
[00:03:23] Dr. Katie Deming: So if you look up the match- map of consciousness, it will be this, beautiful, diagram, I guess, with a, funnel and then, emotions and frequencies on the left-hand side. And basically what it shows is that the high frequency emotions with the highest of enlightenment at the top, and then peace below that, and then joy below that, love below that, reason, acceptance, willingness, and neutrality, these are all in the power range, so [00:04:00] above courage and thought to– or demonstrated by Hawkins' work to be creating health and vitality in the body.
[00:04:10] Dr. Katie Deming: Whereas when you go below courage, and I'll read the ones as they go down from, next down from courage all the way down to the lowest, those are considered a force and, where dis-disease is created in the body. So the emotions below courage are pride, anger, desire, fear,
[00:04:30] Dr. Katie Deming: grief, apathy, guilt, and shame And this is not to say that you should never experience any of these emotions. We are human beings and we experience all the emotions. But, this is basically giving a map, that's what he described it as, a map of consciousness and looking at frequency that correlates to emotion.
[00:04:51] Dr. Katie Deming: And what Hawkins taught was a surrender technique to surrender emotions to move through this scale. So move up from the lower frequency emotions and spending more time in those, go from spending more time in those to a higher frequency emotions where you're spending less time in the low frequencies and h- more time in the higher life creating frequencies.
[00:05:17] Dr. Katie Deming: And so, that scale is called the map of consciousness and, it is, is like a really good way to kind of wrap your mind around just this idea in general is like frequency. Emotions are tied to frequency, and frequency is tied to, the state of health or the state of illness in the body. And there is a whole body of work on the, energy.
[00:05:41] Dr. Katie Deming: Like our– We are energy. Like everything is energy. Everything is in motion, and we perceive ourselves as this solid thing, like this meat suit that some people describe it. I don't like to think about it this 'cause I think this is like a divine vehicle that we've been given that is truly, truly so powerful beyond what we can even conceive when you, tap into the full potential of the human being.
[00:06:08] Dr. Katie Deming: But, this vessel that we have been, um, put into is actually, vibrating and is not solid and holds frequency. And the frequency that we hold is determined largely by our emotions. And so it's– When you understand this, it's really powerful because you can start to see like, “Oh, why might I be creating illness?
[00:06:33] Dr. Katie Deming: Or my– why might I be creating other things that are negative in my life?” It, it, it is tied to your frequency. And this is not to say that we're not going to grieve things or that we don't, you know, feel shame sometimes or feel guilt sometimes. But what we're looking to do is to move through those and to process that grief, and certainly to process and move out of shame and guilt because th- those are just have really, such negative effects on people's lives.
[00:07:05] Dr. Katie Deming: But this idea is that if we can generate, More positive emotions, we can experience more health and vitality in the body. And I, I wanna use an example 'cause I think that it's helpful to think about this. So one of the things that I see all the time, this is like, I see more people who eat all the right foods and still have cancer than people who are eating standard American diet, a whole bunch of processed foods, and getting cancer.
[00:07:34] Dr. Katie Deming: Okay? So I just wanna say that because everyone who messages me on, you know, social platforms or whatever will say, “I, you know, I'm not like your other pa- clients or patients or whatever. I'm doing all the right things and I'm eating all the right things.” I'm like, “Actually, you're just like all my other people because they're doing all the right things,” in doing the right things in quotes, because that is actually potentially part of the problem.
[00:08:01] Dr. Katie Deming: And I'll give you an example. So my mentor was telling me about this gentleman who is in his 80s, and he is, He started out just by telling me what he ate. So I'll tell you what he eats, and then you can tell me whether, like, what, if he's got problems going on with his health or not. So he described that for breakfast, he eats, Hostess cupcakes.
[00:08:24] Dr. Katie Deming: You know, those like, I don't know, like whether it was the Twinkies or the cupcakes, whether th- the chocolate or those like yellow Twinkie things. I'm not sure which one, but one of those two things every morning for breakfast. For decades he's been eating this. And then for lunch, he eats, white like Wonder Bread, with the crust cut off And, he put Spam on that and, like Oscar Mayer weenies, some like really low quality weenies.
[00:08:55] Dr. Katie Deming: And then for dinner, he had some just basic spaghetti pasta with, very inexpensive like, pasta sauce. And then I feel like there was something else in there, like powdered milk or something, and then he had some equally bad dessert as the Twinkies or the Hostess cupcakes in the morning. And this is what he ate every day, and he had been eating this way for 30 years.
[00:09:20] Dr. Katie Deming: And my mentor asked me, you know, “What do you think his health is like?” And I knew it was a trick, right? So I was like, “This is always not just straightforward.” And so I was like, “Well, I wanna know more about him.” And he described him as like just happy-go-lucky, easygoing, not a care in the world. And sure enough, his health is perfect.
[00:09:44] Dr. Katie Deming: He has nothing wrong with him, and he has been eating this way for decades. Decades. So you can just imagine like the nutrient, deficiencies and things that like we would think would happen from eating a diet like that. No vegetables, no, the meat was what you heard, Spam and weenies, and somehow perfect health.
[00:10:09] Dr. Katie Deming: Okay, so that's one example, right? That happens, and I see a lot of that. Like I remember practicing, I would see people who for every reason should have significant illness and would be doing great, and then someone who shouldn't from s- risk factors have cancer or other illness did have cancer or other illness.
[00:10:32] Dr. Katie Deming: So I'll take the opposite extreme to this, and this comes from Anita Moorjani's book, “Dying to Be Me,” which is another book if you have not read, you should put this on your reading list 'cause it is truly a remarkable story. But Anita Moorjani was, living in Singapore, I believe, and she's Indian. That's her, origin, and her parents were Indian, but they were living in Singapore.
[00:10:55] Dr. Katie Deming: And her, I wanna say like her best friend and then her best friend's husband and then her sister-in-law both actually, were dealing with cancer. And for her, she– this became her biggest fear of, you know, getting cancer was her biggest fear.
[00:11:15] Dr. Katie Deming: So Anita Moorjani was in her, I wanna say early 20s, like young, healthy, had a good friend and then like a sister-in-law or brother-in-law who both had cancer, and it really freaked her out, and she was terrified of getting cancer. It was her biggest fear. Wow. And so she ended up basically was like vegan and doing all of like exercise.
[00:11:42] Dr. Katie Deming: Everything in her life was oriented around not getting cancer. Like she was so focused that she had to do all of these things, eat in this very strict way in order to not get cancer. And sure enough, she develops lymphoma. And her whole story is a- actually, centered on her near-death experience where she basically was dying of kidney failure from all– and, and had lymphoma throughout her body, all of these tumors, and, or enlarged lymph nodes, and basically was dying and had a near-death experience where she met her dad, which she had had like a, challenging relationship with him.
[00:12:25] Dr. Katie Deming: And, basically
[00:12:27] Dr. Katie Deming: W- w- saw him, saw that he always still loved her, and then also that she had created her lymphoma from her fear, from all of that fearful eating and, like, everything that she was doing in her life was to prevent cancer because she was so afraid of it. But actually, that is what created the cancer. She saw that in her near-death experience, and then she came back into her body, and when she knew that she had created it, she knew that she could also, heal it.
[00:12:58] Dr. Katie Deming: And she came back into her body and was healed, and now speaks all over the world and, is a living example of what is possible in terms of healing. And I believe, actually, her near-death experience exposed her to very high frequency. But I actually was telling that story to demonstrate the point about her food, right?
[00:13:18] Dr. Katie Deming: So here she was, she was eating all the right foods, right? So she was, you know, right in quotation marks because whatever right is anyway. But, the, the things that are, you know, said to be healthy, but it was the energy with which she was, doing that eating that was impacting her frequency. And so basically, here are two examples.
[00:13:40] Dr. Katie Deming: I have this one gentleman in his mid-80s eating complete garbage. Let's just be honest. He is eating complete garbage and perfectly healthy, and someone in their, you know, let's say 20s, who is doing all the right things but terrified and develops lymphoma. So this is just, like, an example of what David Hawkins talks about, is that it's the frequency that you hold that is creating health or disease in your body.
[00:14:09] Dr. Katie Deming: And the reason why I think that this is true is that I am seeing this in my practice, right? So I was in Western medicine, so I, I practiced for 20 years seeing all of the things that happen there, and people's frequency impact their outcome there. You know, I would have one patient who'd come in, and she would have stage zero breast cancer, so C- DCIS, which by all intents and purposes, honestly, I'm not even sure now needs to be treated like cancer, but regardless, it's treated like cancer, but this person should do very well.
[00:14:42] Dr. Katie Deming: This is like, you know- very low chance of, developing any, life-threatening illness related to the DCIS, and people do very well, and the treatment is manageable. And I would have someone come in and say, ” I'm the one person who's gonna have all the terrible side effects, so like I know that I'm gonna have this and this and this,” and I, I'm like, “Well, I don't expect any of those things literally.”
[00:15:03] Dr. Katie Deming: Like we're doing the consent, and I'm like, “I didn't expect any of those things that you're saying.” And then sure enough, she developed all these side effects and all these weird things that I was like, “I don't– I can't even explain that from the treatment.” And so I would have examples like that, and then other examples where I had…
[00:15:22] Dr. Katie Deming: I remember this woman, she had had neck cancer, and this was like, you know, pretty early in my career, and I was specializing in head and neck cancer at that time. That was what I did in the beginning. And, she– And that is like hard. That is hard treatment. Chemo and radiation for head and neck cancer is like the worst thing that we did.
[00:15:41] Dr. Katie Deming: Like that is the worst treatment that I did, that and probably anal canal cancer. But anyway, super hard. You get like the worst sore throat of your life. Y- you're gonna lose at least 25 pounds. Usually need a feeding tube. I mean, really terrible. You need narcotic p- pain medications. And I remember these consults would be 90 minutes because we would need so much time to talk through the potential side effects and risks associated with the treatment.
[00:16:04] Dr. Katie Deming: So it was like devastating. the crazy part was that people did quite well. Actually, it's interesting, and I know that I have a mixed audience, and some people are gonna be like: “That's terrible that you ever gave chemo and radiation for head and neck cancer.” But to be honest, those people oftentimes would do well, 'cause squamous cell carcinoma is so responsive.
[00:16:21] Dr. Katie Deming: But regardless, this woman was, you know, starting her treatment, and she just said, “Dr. Deming, I know that you think I went through and did that whole, PARQ conversation,” which is like a, consent for the treatment. You have to run through all the side effects. “I did this whole conversation.” Then she said, “Dr.
[00:16:37] Dr. Katie Deming: Deming, I know that you see those things happen in your other patients and that you expect those things to happen to me, but I just need you to know that those things are not going to happen to me, and that my God is a powerful God, and I just don't expect that to happen.” And I was like, “Amazing.” I was like, “I hope they don't happen, too.
[00:17:00] Dr. Katie Deming: I just have to tell you that all of those things are possible.” And what was amazing was that every milestone that I would expect, like so it was typical that people would need an pain medication by week three of this treatment. By week five or f- you know, four, they'd be using their feeding tube regularly for all meals and, you know, by week six, they're like down and out, like really, really challenging, like having a really hard time.
[00:17:28] Dr. Katie Deming: And for her, she would blow past those milestones, and I was like, “She's in week five, and she still doesn't need any narcotics, and she's not using the feeding tube.” And she literally did not have a lot of the side effects that I would've said are just expected. And I remember really being impressed by that, like something is at work there.
[00:17:55] Dr. Katie Deming: And of course it's like our words are powerful and our mind is powerful, but this woman held, now like that I know about frequency, it's like she just was at peace. She like just trusted everything was gonna be okay. And so, I've seen this at work in my own practice, and now that I'm in this, you know, more holistic practice and specifically been just having people do water and fasting, which seems really crazy.
[00:18:24] Dr. Katie Deming: I've traveled a long road from chemo radiation to water fasting. But the interesting thing is that what we're doing in the water fast is just not fasting, and I think that's maybe something that, I don't know that I've been totally clear on this podcast, but what we're doing is we're facilitating transformation through water fasting.
[00:18:42] Dr. Katie Deming: And it's not like we just fast people and that's it. They are– Like, I'm coaching them, I'm teaching w- some of the concepts that I teach here on the podcast, but more in depth because I'm facilitating a transformation for them, whereas you're just getting, you know, snippets of the information and stuff that I teach.
[00:18:59] Dr. Katie Deming: And so anyway, what I have seen with fasting is that I think the transformation and helping people raise their frequency is actually more valuable than making the tumor go away, with autophagy. And I'm not saying that autophagy is not important, and I'm not saying that that's not amazing if that can happen, that a tumor going away, with fasting.
[00:19:28] Dr. Katie Deming: I mean, I think that's incredible, right? And, and why not from a metabolic perspective? But I don't think that that is the power of fasting because fasting really clears you out in a way it like detoxifies your body and calms your nervous system and puts you into a really receptive place to shift from those low frequency emotions.
[00:19:55] Dr. Katie Deming: And this is the… If I were to say like what is the most common thing that outcome that I see from people fasting, it would not be tumors going away. Tumors going away is small. Like I can count on one hand the number of tumors that have just completely disappeared with, you know, no sign of disease anywhere, after water fast.
[00:20:18] Dr. Katie Deming: So that is a small number. I've fasted now 150 people so, but what I see consistently if people do the work, I will say that part of The practice is challenging because people lie to themselves and they don't really do the work of what we're doing fast, and then they miss the opportunity. And I have had like one faster– one of my fasters realize that like first 14 days he had completely wasted and he was like, “I have completely wasted this opportunity.”
[00:20:51] Dr. Katie Deming: And then he doubled down. He ended up fasting with me for 40 days and he did get the transformation that he desired. But, a lot of people waste their time in a fast with me 'cause I, I don't know that they understand the power of what's happening and that's part of why I wanna be explaining that here because it's less about the fasting and more about the transformation.
[00:21:11] Dr. Katie Deming: But what fasting does is that it really facilitates, a state in your body or your vehicle that helps transcend negative emotions like fear. And so the most common thing that I see in my fasters is that people come out without the fear. And I don't know if you can even imagine that. I mean, I, I would say fear is the biggest challenge for anyone who's dealing with cancer.
[00:21:43] Dr. Katie Deming: And of course there's some people like I– there are definitely… I just saw someone like a couple weeks ago and she's like, “I'm just not afraid.” Fear is not their thing. But then th- there is some other emotion, that is connected with it for sure. you just need to do a little bit of digging. But fear is the most common challenge for people with cancer specifically, but also other illness.
[00:22:07] Dr. Katie Deming: And that if you can transcend the fear and experience life without the fear and with the cancer, it creates something that is indescribable, but it is also more powerful than anything else they could imagine. And the most common thing that people said to me is they, they say, ” I came here because I wanted you to make my tumor go away, but what I have walked away with is something so much more powerful in that I have peace, and that no matter what happens with this, I have peace around it.
[00:22:47] Dr. Katie Deming: And I may not know what the next step is, but I will know when I see it, and I trust myself.” That is a healed human being. Now, there may still be some things that need to happen to eradicate the cancer, but I've talked about this on the podcast so many times, the difference between healing and, you know, treating, killing cancer, right?
[00:23:09] Dr. Katie Deming: Healing is not just physical. It is on a deep soul level, and emotions are the key to unlocking that. And then fasting is also another key to facilitating that emotional release and transformation. But basically, what I see is that people are coming out of a fast with what David Hawkins would describe as power.
[00:23:39] Dr. Katie Deming: So when you are living in the power range, you create vitality and health. And when you live in the force range, you're creating illness and disease in the body. And I really… Now that I'm tuned into all of this and I see, you know, everyone comes in and does their own thing, in my fast and, you know, people
[00:24:05] Dr. Katie Deming: do the work to varying degrees. And the in- the work is all internal. This is nothing like you're doing external. This is all self-reflection. This is all going inside, and that is what a fast is so powerful for. That's why, you know, enlightened beings like the Buddha, Jesus or Yeshua, Moses all fasted because [00:24:30] fasted is a way to connect with your true essence and the internal work.
[00:24:34] Dr. Katie Deming: So this is, the way that you can access that still, calm place inside you that is your true nature. Your true nature is pure love and peace and joy. And once you experience that, like through a fast, for example, you can never take that away. You can never remove that from someone. Now, you can choose to get back into fear, but that's a choice.
[00:25:06] Dr. Katie Deming: And that is what I see, is I, I see when people choose to get back in fear, how detrimental that is, and how that can really impact their outcome. And the outcome is not just the eradication of cancer, right? The outcome is a healed human being who feels like I'm living a life that's aligned, and that at the end of their life, they would not be regretful for the way that they had lived.
[00:25:36] Dr. Katie Deming: And so what I see is that our emotions play a big role in this, and that the frequency that we hold is determined by the emotions that we hold most of the time. And so learning to process and work through those emotions, in a way to access more joy, more peace, more acceptance, is a way to heal, you know, on all levels holistically, mind, body, and spirit.
[00:26:09] Dr. Katie Deming: So I wanna talk more about this. I've got so many things that I want to dive into, but I wanted to give a general overview of frequency and how it's tied to, wellbeing in the body or illness in the body, and just give that, basic introduction. And on future episodes, we'll go into more detail about, you know, what does this mean?
[00:26:32] Dr. Katie Deming: What are other indicators, you know, of frequency? And, how do you do the emotional work to work through? and This is a big, big topic. So here's what we covered today. Your frequency, the emotional state you're living in, plays as big a role in your health as anything on your plate. We learned that David Hawkins' Map of Consciousness shows that below courage, the body tends toward illness, and above it, toward vitality.
[00:27:01] Dr. Katie Deming: And finally, the real gift of fasting isn't a shrinking tumor. It's coming out the other side without the fear that was running the show. If there's one thing that I want you to walk away with, it's this: You have more say over your healing than you've been told.
[00:27:16] Dr. Katie Deming: That's not naive. That's power. If today's episode is resonating and you would like to work with me, I offer two ways to work with me directly. A health and healing consult, which is 60 minutes to look at a full picture of what's going on, or a fasting consult that is 30 minutes focused on fasting. Both of those consults are linked below, and book whichever feels like a fit for where you are right now.
[00:27:41] Dr. Katie Deming: Thank you so much for listening. I know your time and attention are valuable, and I'm very grateful you chose to spend time with me today. I release episodes every Tuesday, and I look forward to connecting with you on the next one.
[00:27:53] Dr. Katie Deming: and remember, just like me, you were born to heal.
DISCLAIMER:
The Born to Heal Podcast is intended for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for seeking professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Individual medical histories are unique; therefore, this episode should not be used to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease without consulting your healthcare provider.
A thought-provoking podcast explores cancer through the lens of holistic medicine and functional medicine, discussing causes of cancer, metabolic health, and unconventional approaches like water fasting, fasting and autophagy, and detox, while weighing fasting benefits against chemo side effects and radiation side effects, sharing stories of a cancer survivor navigating chemotherapy, natural medicine, holistic healing, and even spiritual healing on the path toward cancer remission and holistic health.
