[00:00:00] Dr. Katie Deming MD: You're listening to the Born to Heal podcast, and I'm your host, Dr. Katie Deming. After two decades of practicing as an oncologist and caring for thousands of patients, I've seen firsthand how our healthcare system places obstacles in your path to true healing. My guests and I will bridge the worlds of Western medicine and alternative healing to help you achieve optimal health.[00:00:30][00:00:30] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Expect to uncover new insights, share a few laughs, and maybe even shed some tears. But most of all, we'll learn how to heal from within together. So let's dive into today's episode.

[00:00:43] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Today, I am very excited to be joined by Matty Lansdown. Matty, thank you for joining us

[00:00:49] Matty Lansdown: Hey, Katie, how are you?

[00:00:50] Dr. Katie Deming MD: I'm doing great.

[00:00:51] Matty Lansdown: It was nice to have you on my podcast just recently.

[00:00:54] Dr. Katie Deming MD: I know I love chatting with you and I'm actually super excited to bring you to my audience [00:01:00] now. And you know, I think what I want to start with Matty is, talking about like, Why do you think today in 2024, rates of obesity and chronic disease are so high? I have my thoughts, but I want to hear kind of what your thoughts are on that

[00:01:17] Matty Lansdown: Oh, so many thoughts. well, I mean, we're in a world which does not really resemble nature very much at all. and I know that, um, It can sound like to some people that as soon as [00:01:30] a doctor or a scientist or anybody starts talking about nature, we sort of see people roll their eyes and think, Oh, these hippies that think that we're meant to live amongst the trees.

[00:01:40] Matty Lansdown: But the reality is that our genome, our genetic makeup of the animal that we are, and we are an animal hasn't changed really at all since we were actually out in the trees in the wild. And so because, Like, industrial process, progress and social progress and all of these things have moved [00:02:00] forward.

[00:02:00] Matty Lansdown: So slowly we're in a world where what seems normal to one generation, 10 generations later is very different. But 10 generations later, they didn't see the progress, so they see what they see in their life as normal rather than, you know, noticing how far from where we originally began, we have actually moved.

[00:02:21] Matty Lansdown: And so, you know, In that time, so much has changed and we can go all the way back to sort of the beginning of agriculture, which, you [00:02:30] know, meant that we stopped moving around to look for food and we stopped eating seasonally. And we stopped, you know, doing a lot of things, which meant that we had to go and hunt and go and look for things.

[00:02:39] Matty Lansdown: We started farming and putting everyone in the one spot at the one time, which, you know, had an influence on, Basically, reducing genetic diversity because communities were staying in one spot rather than, you know, moving around the country or the continent. and then if you fast forward to, you know, sort of the 1700s, we begin manufacturing, [00:03:00] and that, you know, You know, mass producing food and starting to look at ways to make food more profitable for companies.

[00:03:06] Matty Lansdown: and so, and this is slowly happening at the same time that chemicals are being introduced to our reality. Um, and oils and, and seed oils into the diet. And then, you know, sugar starts being added into food as well. And, you know, sort of in the 1700s, well before that, but not in copious amounts. and then, you know, Technology has just meant that the rate of change in our environment has been exponential in the last 100 [00:03:30] years, and with AI in the modern world, it's happening even faster.

[00:03:33] Matty Lansdown: And so we've got, you know, a world that is more toxic than we've ever had before. And that happened really quickly. You know, we haven't had 100 generations of people to adapt. You know, to learn how to genetically adapt to the toxic world that we're in. It happened in three or four generations, just out of nowhere.

[00:03:52] Matty Lansdown: In the last 100 years, we went from a few 100, maybe 1000 different toxic chemicals that we breathed in every day. And now we're in the [00:04:00] direction of sort of 80 or 90, 000 man made chemicals that we can interact with most days. plus the copious amounts of sugar in our diet, you know, plus, you know, all of the toxins that are in the air from automobiles and cars and trucks and brake dust, you know, which many of which can be tied back to cancer.

[00:04:17] Matty Lansdown: And so the body is just receiving so many insults. Every day from every single angle, from the water that we drink, from the air that we breathe, particularly for in a city, you know, and then almost [00:04:30] all of the food in a supermarket, and then even the produce, even if you try and do the right thing, that's covered in pesticides and herbicides, and so it's just, it's just so difficult.

[00:04:41] Matty Lansdown: To get it right. And, you know, I sort of swing back and forth on the idea of personal empowerment and like, you know, people should want to be healthy for themselves. And then I swing the other way to, you know, the system is letting everybody down and it's so hard to make it work in this modern world.

[00:04:56] Matty Lansdown: but yeah, sort of to summarize that answer. I think we've just come [00:05:00] so far from our natural beginnings of which we were designed to flourish within that. We haven't adapted to what we're in now and the body's falling apart.

[00:05:09] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Absolutely. Well, and I think that there's the two pieces there of like the increased toxicity that we have not adapted to, you know, happening so quickly, but then also really living. differently out of sync with our environment and with the natural cues that we had always lived [00:05:30] with, right? We've disconnected ourselves and then exposed ourselves to so many more toxins, not intentionally, like you said, that it's almost hard to do the right thing.

[00:05:39] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And actually that leads me to my next question, which is like, and I think this This is something that for me, as I started to have awareness of, Oh my goodness, there is so much toxicity. And even when you are trying to do the right thing, it's, if I didn't know better, I would get mad and be like, this is just like absurd [00:06:00] that I cannot find clean food for my family.

[00:06:03] Dr. Katie Deming MD: That that is like, to do that is. almost impossible completely, right? You know, so you do the best that you can, but it was maddening for me. And I think this is one of the things that, especially with people with cancer, when they get sick, they then have this awareness and they are already overwhelmed. So they're already overwhelmed with all of the things that they have going on, managing doctor's appointments.

[00:06:28] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And now, you know, their diet, [00:06:30] and then it's almost feels impossible to do the right thing. So. How do you, what do you say to those people, like, who are just starting to, like, do the right thing with their food and feeling really frustrated, like, how do you approach that and how do you, you know, make those concessions of the things that you're, you know, absolutely adamant about and the other things that you're flexible about in terms of the food that you're eating?

[00:06:52] Matty Lansdown: Yeah, that's such a great question. And I think as well, the thing that I left out of my spiel before was the modern medical industry, right? [00:07:00] It started treating, you know, symptoms with medicare, toxic medication, and that doesn't mean that the medication isn't necessary, but it does have side effects, you know, whereas previous to that.

[00:07:10] Matty Lansdown: All natural medicine had very low risk of, um, side effects from herbs, spices, meals, foods, extracts, you know, that type of thing, but, um, it's a good question. And I think, you know, as a practitioner, you've got to treat the individual, right? if you've got two cancer patients sitting in front of you and one lives in a house full of of, you know, mold and [00:07:30] toxicity.

[00:07:30] Matty Lansdown: Obviously the priority there is going to be detoxifying their home before we even look at the diet. Right. And so, but when it comes to the diet, I think you've got to meet people where they're at. And I often, get asked about, you know, like, should I, should I have a diet Coke, or should I have a diet soda?

[00:07:46] Matty Lansdown: and the answer is if you normally drink soda every day, then the step to diet soda is a good step. Okay. But staying there will probably produce the same outcome for your health, right? and so I think it's about just slowly [00:08:00] stepping in the right direction. And if somebody's at, like regular vegetables, then the next step is organic, right?

[00:08:06] Matty Lansdown: and so, or look, you know, learning how to clean those vegetables. and so, yeah, you've got to meet people where they're at in order to be able to take that next step because yeah, they're so overwhelmed with not only the fear of death for many people when the C word gets dropped in a doctor's office, you know, but then the realization of all of the areas of their life that have previously been outside of their awareness that are not healthy or not ideal, or [00:08:30] the confrontation of themselves of like, yeah, I knew this was coming because I've been eating terribly for 30 years.

[00:08:35] Matty Lansdown: and so, yeah, once, once we sort of, break it all down into baby steps and small chunks because it is a lot. you know, even for us as health professionals, we read new data and new research and we're like, Oh, this is terrible as well. Great. You know? and so, so I think, yeah, it's just one step at a time.

[00:08:51] Matty Lansdown: And, um, I mean, people can be, you know, snapped into radical change and transformation and a cancer diagnosis is one of the few situations which will do [00:09:00] that.

[00:09:00] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Absolutely. Well, and that's actually one of the reasons why I love working with people who have cancer is because there is oftentimes this radical opening and awakening that happens, that there's so much potential for positive change in their lives and using this experience to Change their lives for the better and actually, I think this is a good time for maybe you to explain a little bit How did you end up in this work?

[00:09:27] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Because you and I have similar [00:09:30] stories out of the western oncology space into A more holistic healing space. So can you tell our listeners a little bit about your journey?

[00:09:40] Matty Lansdown: absolutely. So, so I'm a scientist worked as a molecular biologist in cancer research on clinical trials for leukemia and lymphoma. you know, I wasn't particularly high up in the ranks. I was early in my career, you know, bottom of the ladder surrounded by brilliant minds and brilliant professors.

[00:09:56] Matty Lansdown: and so I did that for many years and there was just a few things [00:10:00] on that journey that, that happened. Just sort of twigged in me a thought. and I was, I thought, Why don't we ever talk about the cause of disease? You know, we're in these meetings where we're talking about the difference between subgroup A and subgroup B and the molecular difference between these two people, or these two groups of people that were literally on the ward.

[00:10:19] Matty Lansdown: I had seen them and I just had this moment where I was like, I remember they were all overweight, like they're significantly obese. And this is me in my early 20s, naively asking these stupid questions. And I literally [00:10:30] said to my professor, I said, what if it's like, excuse me for being crass, but I was like, what if they're just both fat?

[00:10:36] Matty Lansdown: Like, and he laughed at me. Um, and he goes, Oh, Matty, if it was that simple, we would have figured this out years ago. And, you know, I guess normally in a, You know, hierarchy of academics. So I was a normal person might've been put back in their box and never asked the stupid question again, but I was like, nah, not convinced.

[00:10:56] Matty Lansdown: and so that just sent me on my own path, of looking into, [00:11:00] well, What is cancer truly? And where did it come from? And when did the war on cancer begin, politically speaking? And what did that mean? And then I discovered the Rockefeller family and the Rothschild family and, and the way that the Western medical, you know, religion.

[00:11:15] Matty Lansdown: Behemoth, uh, came to be, and yeah, just really understood how universities are funded, how, um, farmers are subsidized in regards to the way that they produce the food for the masses and, um, and just went down this huge rabbit hole. And at the very same [00:11:30] time I had a partner, sort of, That I was with for nine years that was incredibly ill that, Western medicine, all the attempts that Western medicine had tried to do and all the surgeries, you know, didn't help her in any way.

[00:11:41] Matty Lansdown: and that, and so these two things were happening, happening simultaneously. So sort of like at work, I was being. you know, provocatively curious with my questions. And sort of at home, I was seeing somebody who Western medicine was failing. And then so went on this journey of learning about food as medicine, Chinese medicine, Ayurveda.[00:12:00]

[00:12:00] Matty Lansdown: Previously, though, I should mention, I used to regard all that stuff as crazy hippie nonsense. Quite literally, I was sort of this arrogant scientist that was like, I'm, you know, I'm educated in medicine and I'm the most intelligent person ever. and then everybody else is like a tree hugger. and now I'm basically a tree hugger.

[00:12:17] Matty Lansdown: and so, so I went on this journey and then I started to realize like Chinese medicine has 10, 000 years of experience. And we're, we're, we're throwing it out and saying Western medicine's better with 150. And, you know, [00:12:30] and, and not, that's not me saying that everything Chinese medicine's ever done is the best.

[00:12:33] Matty Lansdown: the best. but just that there's a lot of knowledge and wisdom in how humans lived in harmony with nature and use nature as the medicine. and so, and that just changed my beliefs about cancer. And then I started connecting with similar people to yourself, Katie, you know, over the last sort of six, seven, eight years of doctors and scientists that had left the medical model and set up cancer clinics or different alternative medicine clinics in Mexico or in [00:13:00] Indonesia, or in these other countries where they could get away with practicing alternatively.

[00:13:04] Matty Lansdown: and you know, these are some genius people that have, you know, have done a lot of great things for cancer patients that, you know, Western medicine said that could never be done. and so then I started being like, Oh my God, my questions aren't crazy. And food does matter. And, and you know, and it was the journey was full of all these little epiphanies.

[00:13:21] Matty Lansdown: Like, you know, people, they get cancer out in their life, and then they come to the hospital to try and get rid of it. And let's say hypothetically, they get rid of it. And then they go back to their life. [00:13:30] And that basic epiphany was like, well, their life is the problem, right? It's like what they're reading, where they're living, what's under their kitchen sink, the makeup that they put on, you know, the air that they're breathing, the water they're drinking, that all happens at home.

[00:13:43] Matty Lansdown: and you could apply that to any chronic disease that someone would come to a hospital for. Is it, it's like the stuff happens at home that causes the problem. So unless the hospital gives you advice about how to change what happens at home, then It's coming back, right? It's, it's 100 percent going to be a relapse.

[00:13:59] Matty Lansdown: So, [00:14:00] so yeah, so anyway, I ended up starting the podcast, How to Not Get Sick and Die, because I was really passionate about, I was like, it's actually really easy to not get sick and die. and so I'm going to do a podcast and tell everybody about it. and then that just seemed to take off in a way that meant, two years later, I was like, I think I can leave my day job.

[00:14:17] Matty Lansdown: Which no longer aligned with me at all anyway,and I was very conflicted. and then, yeah, that was almost six years ago at this point, and now I work in the space. I became a nutritionist in that time as well, and um, yeah, now I sort of work [00:14:30] with emotional eating, binge eating, sugar addiction, and that psychological behavior habit formation behind our food choices.

[00:14:37] Dr. Katie Deming MD: I love that. So, and if you could see us right now, Matty and I are both hugging a tree together. We're like, we've switched to the other side and are hugging the trees. But I think this is the thing is that, once you see it, you can't unsee it. Right? Like once you see the, and for me, like, I love what you said there about, it's like, if we're [00:15:00] not addressing what's happening in their homes, We're not fixing the problem.

[00:15:04] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And this was actually an awareness that I had. Before I had my shared death experience and knew I had to leave in 2017, you know, I heard the story of the Parabola River and my listeners have heard this before, but it was like, you know, this river, the village along the river and that they saw a body, you know, drowning in the river one day and they rushed out and saved that one person.

[00:15:27] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And then the next day there were two and they, you [00:15:30] know, Sent two people out to get them. Then there were four and then eight and it was doubling every day. And the villagers were doing an amazing job with their elaborate rescue, you know, equipment and like rescue boats and all this stuff in the village.

[00:15:41] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Elders were praising them and about what an amazing job they were doing. And I looked, I was at a meditation retreat with one of my girlfriends who's also a GYN oncologist. And I just looked her and I was like, This is us. Like we are the glorified rescue workers on the river. And what is happening? Like, what is happening upstream?

[00:15:59] Dr. Katie Deming MD: [00:16:00] And then by the way, we're putting all these people back on the banks, but what is happening? Like, why is this happening? And so I had that same awareness in a different way, but I was like, there's something wrong here because if we're doing such an amazing job of curing cancer and precision medicine and all these advancements and spending so much money, you know, billions of dollars.

[00:16:23] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Like, why are we getting sicker as a society, right? Like, why are cancer rates increasing? Why am I seeing younger [00:16:30] and younger people coming into my office? And so I think that it's so important for, like, people to understand that, yeah, you can do conventional therapy, but if you don't address how you're living and what you're exposed to in your life, It's basically going to come back and we haven't addressed the problem.

[00:16:50] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And this is basically now my work is like, I help people who are getting conventional therapy, but then also people who don't have conventional therapy and [00:17:00] recognizing that it's okay. Like there's not one way that it's not right. If you do conventional therapy or right, if you don't do it, it's whatever's right for you, but you have to understand that if you do those therapies, you need more, you need to also be looking at these other pieces and how you're living.

[00:17:16] Matty Lansdown: One of the

[00:17:16] Dr. Katie Deming MD: But I want to,

[00:17:17] Matty Lansdown: I was going to say when you mentioned conventional therapy or not conventional therapy, one of the things that kind of drives me wild is that the doctors and medical industry and society as a whole pressures people to do conventional [00:17:30] therapy as if it's the only smart answer. Uh, and, uh, I'm like, have you looked at the death rates of chemotherapy?

[00:17:38] Matty Lansdown: Like they're not amazing. and so it's like they, you know, everyone feels peer pressured and, and we all grew up in this medicalized world. So I can understand when you're feeling like a deer in the headlights, that the safe option is the one that looks familiar, you know? and then there's all these other people, but I think even if you do conventional therapy and have other supports around people like you and I, Katie, like the amount of chemo that you're going to [00:18:00] have to put into your body ideally will be far less.

[00:18:02] Dr. Katie Deming MD: mm hmm, exactly. Well, and I think that we've been conditioned to expect side effects from drugs. And this is actually what's surprising for me now in this new work, is people will accept crazy side effects from conventional therapy. Like I would run through this list of things that can happen with radiation therapy.

[00:18:26] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And then, you know, it's like, okay. And then [00:18:30] now, you know, like switching someone's diet or whatever. And they're having like, And they're like, this is a problem. And it's so funny. Cause I'm like, we've, we've been conditioned into thinking, well, of course, if you're going to take medications, you're going to have these, you know, side effects or whatever.

[00:18:44] Dr. Katie Deming MD: But if you do something natural, you know, there absolutely, you know, should be no effects whatsoever. And it's like, no, no, no. Like. anything that you're going to do implementing a change in the body is going to have a response. And actually a lot of the work that we do in this space, both you [00:19:00] and myself is detoxification.

[00:19:02] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And you don't feel great when you're detoxifying. And so it's, you know, one of those things where I've realized like, Oh, we've really been conditioned to accept a lot of things from conventional therapies and traditional pharmaceutical medications, that make it easy For the system to continue that way.

[00:19:20] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And I, that's not an accident, you know, I think that all of that has happened, in a way that I, this is what I say is that the system works exactly the way it was [00:19:30] designed. It's just that you don't know what it was designed for and it wasn't necessarily designed to make you well and keep you well for the rest of your life.

[00:19:37] Matty Lansdown: Yeah. I so agree with that. And like. A lot of people say that capitalism is the problem and that big pharmaceutical companies, but we're, we're all out to try and make money and to be able to pay for our life and that type of thing. I just think, like you said, the system was not necessarily designed to produce healthy humans.

[00:19:54] Matty Lansdown: because yeah, If you don't keep paying them money for their drugs and the government deals that, [00:20:00] you know, between the government, the pharmaceutical companies don't go ahead. And, and until society from an economic standpoint can see a way to benefit from healthy humans, they, I think my belief is that they will continue to try and make us sick.

[00:20:12] Dr. Katie Deming MD: So I want to come back to actually something that you said after that last question, which was what you do now and talking about emotional eating and some of the things that keep people trapped in eating in a way that is not for their highest health. And so I'm wondering [00:20:30] if you can talk about that.

[00:20:30] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Cause. Just before getting on this call with you. I was working with someone and we're working on diet Specifically because you know, I span a lot of things but diet is one of those things that is part of the work that I do and She did not want to give up her, you know, the some of the foods that she had and specifically some of the like sweet carbohydrates, she was just having like such a terrible time.

[00:20:57] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And, so it just made me think, I'm [00:21:00] like, I can't wait to talk to Matty about like, what is happening here? Why is it so hard for us to shift our diet from the way that we eat in, you know, Western society?

[00:21:11] Matty Lansdown: so many answers to this question.so I guess the way that I got to this world of emotional eating, is simply, I thought I was just being a curious scientist of looking for the cause of disease. And so, you know, I worked in the hospital and I was, you know, being a scientist, Quote unquote looking for a cure, you know, as we all kind of are and then, you know, came to this [00:21:30] realization that everybody that was, you know, in our trials or that was in the hospital, the very vast majority was significantly overweight, especially at the beginning of their treatment journey.

[00:21:38] Matty Lansdown: And so then I thought, Oh, I'll become a nutritionist. And then I, you know, did that and then realized that everybody that I spoke to already knew what to eat. Sure, they didn't have a nutrition degree, but generally speaking, I've quite literally never spoken to anyone. And I've spoken in a bunch of countries to a group, you know, many different socioeconomic groups.

[00:21:56] Matty Lansdown: So you, you know, you would assume that less educated people don't know as much. [00:22:00] I've never spoken to anyone that didn't know meat and vegetables was a good idea. As a general umbrella idea of how to eat food and that chocolate for breakfast was not ideal. Never met anyone. Um, so, and you would speak to people, you know, with cancer and, uh, how's your diet?

[00:22:14] Matty Lansdown: Oh, Matty, you know, could be better, I guess. Like, people know, right? People know. So that, so the reason I ended up at emotional eating is because people know. And so it's like, it's the psychology and the mindset and the emotions that are driving our inability to [00:22:30] change, or our, you know, whatever's, whatever's holding us there.

[00:22:32] Matty Lansdown: Um, and so that's how I ended up in this work. And so for me, I kind of thought, Oh, well, maybe the, one of the big causes of cancer is, to tackle is people's emotional health and emotional well being and their, you know, the way that they see themselves because someone that sees themselves as deserving and healthy and well, and like they act in accordance with their identity.

[00:22:52] Matty Lansdown: and so anyway, that's how I got into this work and then all the attachments that we have to food. So I mean, there's so many ways that we can look back to when we were younger and how our [00:23:00] parents might have used unhelpful foods to make us feel better when we were sick or to shut us up when we were having a tantrum.

[00:23:07] Matty Lansdown: the other thing is that, you know, there's some people that lived in, you know, had lots of brothers and sisters. And so, you know, food was a little bit more scarce. and so that might've created, you know, something within us that meant that every time food is available. finish it all, eat it all, you know, binge eat every time you can, because when we were kids, we couldn't binge eat.

[00:23:25] Matty Lansdown: And what we did get to eat, we had to eat fast so that we got enough, you know, and that [00:23:30] can create this cycle as we get older, that once we've got resources and money and access, that we're binge eating all of the time, because we've got, you know, access that doesn't stop, which then leads to being overweight and metabolic dysfunction, and then, you know, cancer in this conversation, right?

[00:23:43] Matty Lansdown: And so the other, but the other thing is, it might not even be necessarily tied to that cycle being your general childhood. But there, there could be some really awful, heavy stuff in there, some really deep trauma. And a conversation that I have far too often with women is [00:24:00] about sexual trauma. And the idea that, that what is leading them to, eat at the core is, is, and there's a few different reasons.

[00:24:08] Matty Lansdown: But one of the most common is that if they've got a history of yo yo dieting, which look, who doesn't diets are not designed to be long term sustainable things, they appeal to that, you know, get results fast kind of mentality, but is that, A lot of people yo yo diet because what they find is as they start to lose weight, if they have a sexual trauma history, even if it's [00:24:30] one small incident that didn't get super chaotic, but it was just enough to really make them feel uncomfortable about themselves and the world.

[00:24:37] Matty Lansdown: Afterwards, They gain this weight as a layer of protection from the world. They don't want to be appealing to men. They don't want to be sexually attractive to men, and it's a physical layer and barrier between them and the world. and so they find they go on these diets because society says they should be skinny.

[00:24:54] Matty Lansdown: They lose a bunch of weight and they feel, you know, And then they just find that they give up, right? And so this is [00:25:00] one really common conversation that I have. It's this cycle between fearing being in a more attractive, more appealing, more complimentary receiving body, which says to them, danger. My, my life is in danger if I'm in this body.

[00:25:14] Matty Lansdown: So that's just one example of, you know, a cocktail of emotions and self worth and self sabotage and a lack of self love. That need to be worked on, you know, and then of course, there's just the reality because it's not always trauma, you know, I'm not one of those sort of practitioners. It's like everybody's life stories that, [00:25:30] you know, connected to trauma.

[00:25:31] Matty Lansdown: it can simply be that the marketing and advertising industry of food and wine has nailed it. They've done their job, you know, for 40 years or 50 years in your life. and you just fell into these habits because it's cheap. It's at the supermarket, it's bright colors. You're a human marketing is designed to manipulate your human elements, right?

[00:25:50] Matty Lansdown: Um, so it can just be, Oh, I'm just in this cycle. and so we, we need to change those cycles, but yeah, there can be some really deep emotions and, and not feeling [00:26:00] deserving or healthy or well, you know, deserving of being healthy and well. and so we go on these. Yeah, these cycles. Plus, particularly for the women I work with, a lot of them are mothers and grandmothers, and they're so in the pattern of saving everybody else first.

[00:26:13] Matty Lansdown: and it's not necessarily that we need to change that narrative, but we also need to add in, let's save you too, right? which can take a lot of time because people have guilt. About putting themselves first, right? and this, and this is all in the context of where we started, which is that the world has changed significantly because once upon a [00:26:30] time, it was fine for mom or grandma or whoever to comfort feed us because there wasn't a copious amount of toxic food available.

[00:26:38] Matty Lansdown: and so. Now we're having these uncomfortable conversations with loved ones and saying, Hey, I actually need you to stop doing that. You know, once upon a time it was totally fine for them to do that because we didn't have 17 meals a day. You know, we had two or three if we were lucky. So, um, so yeah, so there's so many emotions that can drive our food choices and our inability to stop with certain [00:27:00] foods.

[00:27:00] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Yeah, well, and This is, aligns directly with the work that I do as well because emotions are underlying so many problems that we have with our health, cancer included, and it may not be like the only cause. So this is one thing that I'm always. Cautious to say to people is like, okay, it's not going to be one thing that caused your cancer and it's not going to be one thing that we're going to do to heal it.

[00:27:27] Dr. Katie Deming MD: It's the lifestyle, right? It's so it's all these [00:27:30] things, but there is a huge emotional component to eating that is, you know, not making us healthy, but also in the development of illness. And, you know, when I first started talking about emotions, I, I, I literally felt like people were like running away.

[00:27:47] Dr. Katie Deming MD: They're like, Oh my God, what is she? She's like, I have cancer. And now she's saying it's my fault or something. I'm like, no, it's not that, but it's understanding the power of Past emotional trauma [00:28:00] that we carry with us that's unaddressed and the way that it affects our subconscious mind And I love that you brought up identity in there when you were talking about emotional eating It's like the identity that has been you know Programmed into our subconscious mind impacts our behavior, even if we're not aware of it, right since 95 percent of our behavior is Driven by the subconscious mind.

[00:28:23] Dr. Katie Deming MD: But I think that this is an important point for people to hear is like, you know, I talk about this with emotions, but it's [00:28:30] also with eating is that, you know, there are things that we may have experienced emotionally, that if they're not addressed, we will continue to attempt to protect ourselves. And those things may be coming from a subconscious level where you're not even aware.

[00:28:46] Dr. Katie Deming MD: You may think, Of course I want to be thin. Of course I want to look beautiful, but then the subconscious is like, that's dangerous. So we've got to put this layer of fat on so that men don't look at you because men looking at you is [00:29:00] dangerous. So I love that you bring that up, around trauma. And then also a lot of, one of the things that I talk about a lot is emotional fluency of like, not only, you know, I think of like, emotional trauma or caring, you know, like emotional.

[00:29:15] Dr. Katie Deming MD: baggage is like a backpack full of boulders and rocks, right? And you're walking around, it's like weighing you down, right? And so like wanting to release and get rid of some of those boulders in the backpack, but then also not packing more of [00:29:30] them in there because we are all exposed to things that are potentially emotionally charged or traumatic.

[00:29:36] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And how do you help people be fluent? with those emotions so that they don't get stuck, like either suppressing them and not, you know, not feeling them or explaining them away with like, you know, going into their left side of their brain or just losing it and feeling like it's not safe to have their emotions.

[00:29:52] Dr. Katie Deming MD: So I love this, you know, component of what you're talking about with the connection between emotions [00:30:00] and eating. And I want to ask you, like, is this why? Is it the emotional component that makes it so hard to change your diet and your nutritional plan? Is this what is getting in the way? Cause I, like you said, people know what they want to do, but it's these emotions.

[00:30:18] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And so what is it like if someone just wants to, you know, is looking at implementing new dietary changes, they have cancer, they know they need [00:30:30] to make these changes, What is your advice from an emotional standpoint of like where to start to help them, you know, get past this block?

[00:30:39] Matty Lansdown: Yeah, it's a good question. I think the first thing I have anybody do if we're doing the emotional eating work, is just eat normally and take a diary or, you know, collect all the data about your food, nutrition and your emotions and the location that you eat. and, and a lot of people. begin emotionally illiterate, right?

[00:30:57] Matty Lansdown: Which is, I don't know what I'm feeling, [00:31:00] you know, this has been on autopilot for 40 years. and so it's just figuring out exactly what our emotions are. So developing a bit of emotional literacy and there's some brilliant apps, out there that can help with that. but yeah, it's developing that emotional literacy and figuring out what do I feel at breakfast or what do I feel?

[00:31:18] Matty Lansdown: When I'm eating chocolate or what do I feel? You know, is it loneliness? Is it sadness? And it might be a lot of those heavy emotions. If there's just been a cancer diagnosis, there might be a lot of fear eating and just panic, [00:31:30] right? Which can be a combination of things, right? It could be numbing out. So I did that in my earlier life.

[00:31:35] Matty Lansdown: I had some You know, pretty hardcore trauma happened when I was a kid, and then as a young adult, the way that I dealt with that was to eat copious amounts of carbs and sugar so I could numb out and feel nothing, you know, like the same way as, you know, an alcoholic might get drunk. So you could be avoiding emotions altogether, you could be running away from them.

[00:31:52] Matty Lansdown: Um, so you, you first and foremost need to figure out what is the emotion and what is the food that, that is tied to, or the type The type of food that that is tied to, [00:32:00] and the reason I include location is because, you know, our habits are usually ingrained into our environment. And one of the easiest ways to change habits is to change the environment.

[00:32:09] Matty Lansdown: However, we usually can't sell our home overnight and and relocate somewhere else or quit our job overnight. Um, so, but the reason we're getting all of these data points is to it. to be able to get a different perspective on the environment, and start realizing like, Oh, maybe it's not totally me. Maybe I'm not totally broken.

[00:32:26] Matty Lansdown: And it's like, there's a few other people or a few other triggers or a [00:32:30] few other things in my world that I could change or talk to. you know, and it might, again, it might not happen overnight, but it might take a bit of time. and so, you know, first and foremost, emotion and food, what's going on there.

[00:32:41] Matty Lansdown: And then once we know what the feeling is or what the purpose of the food or of the snack is, then we can start playing with alternative ways to manage or process that emotion that do not include food. and again, like I said before, you know, the step one might be Coke to Coke zero, but eventually it'll be Coke.[00:33:00]

[00:33:00] Matty Lansdown: To ten push ups, or walk around the block, or call a friend, or ask, ask somebody in the house for a hug, you know, like, whatever the, the dopamine producing alternative is, um, because that's the other thing in this modern world, we're on this dopamine rollercoaster all of the time between social media and, you know, our phones and, and, you know, Um, sugar and porn and all of the things that exist that are just designed to hijack our dopamine.

[00:33:24] Matty Lansdown: Um, so sometimes it can just be, I'm addicted to these dopamine spikes that I get every four [00:33:30] seconds from my phone. And the second my phone doesn't go off, I go straight for chocolate, right? Um, so it might be re regulating our dopamine pathways might be a part of that conversation too. And the other thing that I find is pretty common, that, is that we can use that as control.

[00:33:44] Matty Lansdown: So if you feel like your life is out of control, and this is often going to be a feeling that it happens when you get a cancer diagnosis, is that you feel like, Whoa, this is happening to me. I have no choice or control over this situation. And if you already kind of feel out of control of your life or your marriage [00:34:00] or, you know, the chaos that exists with your with your life, chocolate is reliable.

[00:34:04] Matty Lansdown: Chocolate is trustworthy, it's cheap, it's there, it tastes the same every time, and it's the place in your life that you can exert, exert control and feel like you're in control of something, right? so, so yeah, we've got to identify that emotion first, figure out which food or time of day or location is associated with it, and then from there, we can start processing or working through whatever heaviness or not heaviness has come up, but yeah, [00:34:30] start doing that work.

[00:34:31] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Yeah, and that's brilliant because it's just basically bringing awareness. So bringing to their conscious awareness. What they're doing with the food. And it's kind of like the first step of looking at, you know, the food that you're eating is just even keeping track of it to see, Oh, what is it that I'm putting my mouth?

[00:34:48] Dr. Katie Deming MD: But I love that additional two pieces of what emotion am I experiencing? Number one, so that they can get in tune with what emotions they're experiencing, because like you said, a lot of [00:35:00] people don't even know what they're feeling, right? They're just numbing. And then the environment. as well. So those, that's a beautiful, example of way to increase your awareness about why you might be eating from an emotional perspective.

[00:35:13] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And you, I've heard you say that emotions matter more than the diet that you're on. Can you explain what you mean by that?

[00:35:22] Matty Lansdown: Yeah, absolutely. So I guess the emotions we feel, they affect our biology. right. Like if we're always thinking [00:35:30] destructive, negative thoughts, that's quite literally producing cortisol and, you know, amounts of adrenaline in our system, which is going to mean, you know, that's some degree of a stress response, which is going to be triggering our survival and, you know, altering at the way that we digest and absorb.

[00:35:44] Matty Lansdown: and so I, I think that those emotions that inform the way that our body Physically exists in time and space. You know, the hormone profile that shows up someone that is loving and attentive and caring and supportive and has their own back is it's [00:36:00] very unlikely that person is having a stress response every time they eat.

[00:36:03] Matty Lansdown: Right? and equally, those emotions are going to drive behaviors. you know, because the stress response is connected to all of the negative feelings about self. Which means we're going to more likely be moving in the direction of unhealthy food and unhelpful food and then beat ourself up for making that choice anyway.

[00:36:20] Matty Lansdown: and so some, but somebody that's, you know, proud of who they are or excited or even just stable, like even not feeling anything, you know, super ultra happy about themselves, they're just like, [00:36:30] This is who I am, and I'm fine with it. And it's great. you know, the hormone profile in that person's body and the neurotransmitter profile is going to be much more favorable and in favor of making healthy choices.

[00:36:40] Matty Lansdown: Equally, I would say that the person that eats the chocolate and has the happy hormone profile still has a better outcome, right? Because they are accepting of the choice that they're making. And I'm not, I'm also want to be clear that I'm not one of those people that's saying, Oh, never eat unhealthy or unhelpful food.

[00:36:58] Matty Lansdown: It's about the energy that we take with [00:37:00] it. Like if you're in a, let's say you're in a bigger body, but you get to a place where you're totally fine with that. You're at peace with it. You don't care what anybody else thinks. And you're just like, this is who I am. And it's wonderful. You know, almost every skinny person is going to be jealous of you because that freedom that comes with accepting yourself in the body that you want to be in and that you feel best in, that's fabulous.

[00:37:20] Matty Lansdown: That's so freeing, you know, that you get away from all of that stress response and all the self savagery and all the self. talk that's just beating you down into a hole. you know, and so that self acceptance [00:37:30] is really important, but I, I genuinely believe that the effect on our digestion, the effect on at the absorption of nutrition that we have when we're in a stress response, somebody that's feeling a heap of negative emotion all the time versus somebody that's feeling stable or positive emotion more regularly is going to have more impact necessarily than the diet.

[00:37:49] Matty Lansdown: And I've, you know, there's a lot of people that I work with that have had weight loss resistance, having tried lots of different diets.

[00:37:55] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Yeah. Well, and also not to mention that, you know, we use [00:38:00] CGM. So continuous glucose monitoring for my clients and They can eat the same thing, but if they're stressed, the presence of cortisol actually increases that glucose spike, right? So there is physiological effects to our emotions and what we're thinking and feeling.

[00:38:20] Dr. Katie Deming MD: when we're eating those foods. And also, when you said that about someone who say someone is, you know, really comfortable with their body, but they're at a weight that [00:38:30] is higher than what we would say is healthy, but they've come to a level of self acceptance. I think there's something powerful here, because actually, Doing that emotional work and self love work to love yourself exactly as you are and not having to get to some weight before you're going to love yourself is a critical component of all of this work.

[00:38:54] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Because when we love ourselves exactly, if you can love yourself and [00:39:00] 10, 20, whatever pounds overweight, and you can truly love yourself and find love. Like this self love and compassion at a weight that you don't necessarily want to be at, the weight actually will come off faster than if you, you know, are thinking that the, that happiness and that self love is going to come from, And this is like with any other goal.

[00:39:24] Dr. Katie Deming MD: We think that once I have this, I'm going to be happy, right? And what happens? You get to that goal. And it's not because [00:39:30] self love and self worth comes from the inside. And it's really powerful to do the work when. You maybe aren't where you want to be because that's harder than loving yourself when you've lost the weight.

[00:39:43] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And, and, and also it shifts the identity. Like I'm someone who loves myself no matter what. And then you start thinking about food as nourishment. Like I love this body and wanting to give it the best nutrients.

[00:39:57] Matty Lansdown: I was going to say off the back of that, is that also your, [00:40:00] you know, it sounds like a throwaway line, but I think it's pretty accurate, is that your vibe attracts your tribe, right? And so, you know, as Jim Rohn and Tony Robbins always say, you know, you're the average of your five closest friends or people.

[00:40:12] Matty Lansdown: People. And so if you're shifting into self acceptance and self love and self, you know, respect, you're going to start realizing that the people you've been hanging out with for the last 30 years, they resemble self sabotage and self degradation and, you know, self like beating each other up. And they probably bitch and whinge [00:40:30] about all the other people all the time, you know, and so you're going to feel this, this You know, and that's a part of this journey is feeling the fear of losing your tribe.

[00:40:38] Matty Lansdown: and you might, you might have a great tribe that says, Hey, you do you, you know, amazing. We'll support you. but also you gravitate towards new people and new tribes and new communities, which is a really, really important part of our survival psychologically as animals. you know, there's that community element, which is so important and sort of going back way back to the start of the conversation is, you know, this This idea that we all live [00:41:00] in individual homes and don't spend much time together with anybody is a part of the challenges that we feel in modern day society, you know, is that once upon a time we were tribes, we were always together.

[00:41:11] Matty Lansdown: Um, we, you know, we're in community and, uh, having conversations and experiences together with other people. And so I think that that's a piece of the puzzle too, is that ideally you want to move towards communities and tribes and that share your values. And so if you shift into that. Like self acceptance and positivity, more often than not, you're going to [00:41:30] move towards groups of people that experience that more often than not, and then it's ideally a self perpetuating cycle.

[00:41:35] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Yeah. After that initial shakeup of who needs to go, because there's definitely going to be some people that may need to. you know, go out of your circle. And that actually comes back to the thing that you were talking about with women, putting everyone else first. And this is something that absolutely I saw in my practice.

[00:41:55] Dr. Katie Deming MD: I took care of, you know, my specialty was breast and gynecologic cancers and [00:42:00] women's cancers specifically, there is really this, Dis, like predisposition, or I don't know if it's a predisposition, but basically a tendency to put themselves last, you know, and, and then, and actually this is one of the things that was really frustrating for me as a provider is that they would do the treatments because if the doctor said you need to do a treatment, they would do everything exactly was said needed to be done.

[00:42:25] Dr. Katie Deming MD: But then when they finished treatment, They would dive [00:42:30] back into their life that they had before that, by the way, this is what is at home, right? So this is what needed to change. But instead of modifying and cutting back, they actually dove in and were doing even more because now they felt guilty that their family had been, you know, holding down the fort while they were having treatment.

[00:42:49] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And it's this, it's really important for women in particular to understand that part of. The healing is creating [00:43:00] boundaries and understanding that you can't give something that you don't have. And my mentor always says to me, like, Katie, I want to give you 50 cents, but I can't give you 50 cents if I don't have a dollar in my pocket.

[00:43:14] Dr. Katie Deming MD: You know, I need to have a dollar first before I can give you half of it. And then when you give it, don't give more than half because otherwise you end up depleted and then you can't continue to help them. And so I think there's this really important part [00:43:30] of recognizing. That caring for yourself and starting to put yourself first is like part of the tribe.

[00:43:38] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Like you are part of the tribe and the tribe is not going to do as well if you are not taking care of yourself. And, and really pulling that back in. So, and then the other thing that with the tribe piece, I was talking to a client earlier today, And she was just like, you know, cooking has become just like something I really dislike.[00:44:00]

[00:44:00] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And the reason why is because I'm all alone in the kitchen. I'm cooking and making all the food and my husband and kids are off doing whatever they want to be doing. You know, they're outside enjoying the sun and here I am like stuck in the kitchen making these meals and she's just resentful. And kind of.

[00:44:18] Dr. Katie Deming MD: resenting food because of this dynamic. And I think this comes to, we didn't do that before. Like women would, you know, if they were cooking, it was like together and we would share [00:44:30] in the duties and all of that. And because we all live in our own homes and, you know, are these isolated little units, it ends up feeling kind of overwhelming to be shouldering all of that responsibility.

[00:44:43] Matty Lansdown: Yeah, I totally agree. but and that's a great identification of her needs, right? That she shared that. And it's like, Oh, I need to be feel like I'm in community or supported in this process by having a human around. and I think that that's, you know, it's so relevant. And I think a lot of the ways that [00:45:00] people eat these days have a lot to do with, you know, Yeah, isolation and loneliness.

[00:45:04] Matty Lansdown: And, you know, there's a lot of we're moving into an era of society where a lot of people are single and choosing to be single. And, you know, the sort of long term relationship structure idea seems to be slowly falling apart. Now, you know, society. The result of that is disconnection and loneliness, you know, on some level.

[00:45:21] Matty Lansdown: So I think that that's, um, yeah, it's, it's really apt, I guess, for this time of society. But I think the other thing that we're not really used to, is the [00:45:30] idea as well that, you know, we can solve that loneliness with food, because that's such a new idea, you know. as well, which is again, something that we needed to go and hunt for or risk our lives to go and find.

[00:45:41] Matty Lansdown: and so this idea that, Oh, we can solve our loneliness and disconnection with food is something we're not adapted to at all. And I think that's why it's so out of control now. And I think a lot of people are sort of saying, Oh, well, why is everyone talking about emotions? And it's like, well, the emotions have probably always been there, but the tools that we now use to deal with [00:46:00] them, they're so new.

[00:46:01] Matty Lansdown: They're so new. And so we're still figuring out how to, how to do it all. And that's, you know, arguably the work that you and I are doing is helping people figure out what do we do with all of these feelings and all of these, all of this food, all of the actions that I'm taking in my life to compensate for the way that I feel or cover up the way that I feel.

[00:46:19] Matty Lansdown: cause yeah, it's, it's just, I guess a lot of people are sort of thinking, you know, we're at a stage where, you know, everyone's just gonna get sick and die, which is, it seems like every person has some kind of [00:46:30] condition or you get to 50 and you just line up at the hospital and get your diagnosis. and it wasn't that long ago that dying of natural causes in your sleep was pretty normal.

[00:46:39] Matty Lansdown: you know, and so, you know, I think, I would love people to get back to that kind of life of, you know, not expecting to get a disease. But, again, that's the kind of work that we, that you and I both do, is ideally helping people to produce that outcome.

[00:46:53] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Absolutely. Well, Matty, it's been so nice to have you here and chat again. I feel so privileged to have [00:47:00] talked to you twice and in the span of a week, but, um, can you share with people, where can they find you?

[00:47:06] Matty Lansdown: Yeah, sure, thanks. And, yeah, Katie, thanks so much for having me on and being on my show. So, um, you can hear T Katie talk at how to not get sick and die. So that's a podcast and you can find it on all in every podcast platform. and then my website, Matty Lansdowne. com. and yeah, if you're an emotional eater or identify with anything we've talked about today, feel free to reach out if you need some support with food and, and weight loss and gut health and all of [00:47:30] that kind of stuff.

[00:47:30] Dr. Katie Deming MD: I love it. Well, thank you so much, Matty.

[00:47:32] Matty Lansdown: Thank you.

[00:47:33] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Thank you for joining me on Born to Heal. It's been a privilege to share this time with you, and I hope that today's episode has offered you valuable insights on your journey toward optimal health. Please consider subscribing, sharing this podcast with your friends, and leaving us a review. To learn more about how you can work with me, please visit katydemming.

[00:47:57] Dr. Katie Deming MD: com. You can find [00:48:00] additional resources in the episode show notes linked below, and remember to join us next week as we continue to explore more holistic approaches to healing. Until then, this is Dr. Katie Deming reminding you that just like me, you were born to heal.