[00:00:00] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Hello everyone and welcome back to The Born to Heal podcast. I'm Dr. Katie Deming, your host, and today I wanna answer the question, what would I do if I was diagnosed with cancer? And I'll tell you, it's actually easy. The first thing that I would do is a 30 day water fast. And I'm not alone actually in this.

[00:00:28] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Idea or recommendation, you'll find clips of top health experts, including Dr. Mark Hyman, Dr. Naasha Winters, professor Thomas cfri, Jason Fung, Dr. Paul Merrick, Dr. William Lee, all saying that they would use fasting in their toolbox against cancer. So I guess what I wanna dive into is why, why would. Me and so many other thought leaders in the health space [00:01:00] recommend fasting for cancer.

[00:01:02] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And really, I'm gonna give six reasons here, and then in another episode I will go into what does water fasting entail? But on this episode, I just want to help you understand. Why I would consider doing a prolonged water fast. So the first is cancer is a metabolic condition, and fasting is a metabolic approach to healing cancer.

[00:01:25] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And this comes to the work of Otto Warberg. That described that cancer uses fermentation or glycolysis to make its energy or a TP, whereas normal cells use oxidative phosphorylation that requires mitochondria and for fermentation, the type of metabolism that cancer cells use. Glucose is the primary fuel source for fermentation.

[00:01:55] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And when you go. When you do a prolonged [00:02:00] fast, what happens is, is that you go into ketosis, and ketosis flips a switch from using glucose as the primary fuel source to using ketone bodies from your fat. So you're basically switching from primarily using glucose for the body's fuel source to using ketone bodies from the fat and cancer cells.

[00:02:25] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Can't use ketone bodies for their fuel. So you are essentially starving out the cancer cells, and this is what all the literature is about, using a ketogenic diet. You can create ketosis with fasting. You can also create it with a ketogenic diet. But so fasting also does the same thing. It gets you into ketosis.

[00:02:46] Dr. Katie Deming MD: It can take up to three, sometimes four days to get into ketosis, but once you're there, you're basically depriving the cancer of its fuel source. That's, so that's the first thing. Cancer is metabolic condition and fasting is a [00:03:00] metabolic approach to healing cancer. ~The second thing is cancer is associated with toxicity.~

[00:03:02] Dr. Katie Deming MD: ~It's associated with too much physical toxicity, like toxins from our environment, environmental toxins. It's also associated with emotional toxicity. So people who have a history of trauma are. It's associated with cancer as well. And so emotional trauma is um, or actually I'm gonna start this section O over.~

[00:03:02] Dr. Katie Deming MD: So the second reason is that cancer is associated with increased toxicity and toxicity of all kinds, from physical to emotional and mental toxins. And fasting promotes detoxification on all levels. So. Let's talk, start by talking about physical toxins. So these can be toxins in our environment. They can be toxins in our food, they can be toxins in our products, and those toxins are stored in the fat on our body.

[00:03:35] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And actually, you know, you can even think, oh, I've been eating clean for the past, let's say five years. Well. The rest of your life, all of those toxins are stored in your fat. And so fasting is a way that you can start dumping the toxins in your fat because when you do a prolonged water fast, the body uses starts using the fat as its primary fuel [00:04:00] source, which we just talked about with ketosis.

[00:04:02] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And that is a way for us to start dumping the fat, the toxins that are stored in our fat and allowing our body to detoxify itself naturally. ~This is Bo.~ This is our body's natural way of detoxifying itself. The other thing is emotional toxicity is associated with. Illness including cancer. So there are studies showing that people who have history of emotional trauma have a higher incidence of cancer.

[00:04:28] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And one of the beautiful things that happens for people is once you start detoxing the body physically, which typically most detox the, the most heightened detox, physical detox happens between days four and seven. Once you get past that physical detoxification, you start to see emotional. Stuff, toxicity coming to the surface for people, and they do have this beautiful purging of emotional toxicity during the fast as well.[00:05:00]

[00:05:00] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And then mental toxicity. So we know that our thoughts are related to what we are creating in our life, including our health and. A lot of the thoughts that we have living in modern society are toxic, and these can make us sick and fasting. When, when I'm talking about fasting, my people not only fast from food, so they're just drinking water, but we also have them fast from media, getting off social media and really fasting from their life and by.

[00:05:31] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Removing yourself from all of these, you know, inputs that potentially are toxic for us, we start to get clear and have tremendous mental clarity about what needs to change in our life. And I've said this many times on this podcast that healing requires change, fasting. Gives that mental clarity for what needs to change to facilitate healing in your life.

[00:05:56] Dr. Katie Deming MD: So that's the second thing, is that cancer is associated [00:06:00] with toxicity and fasting promotes detoxification on all levels, physical, emotional, and mental. The third reason why I would do a prolonged water fast if I had cancer is that cancer acts. Like a parasite on the body, right? So cancer normally is feeding off the body, it's taking the body's resources.

[00:06:20] Dr. Katie Deming MD: That's why people get thin and that's why it starts taking over organs. It is it starting to use the resources of the body for its own purposes, acting like a parasite and fasting flips that script and allows the body to start feeding off the cancer rather than the cancer feeding off the body. And this is actually one of the most profound reasons why I love water fasting for cancer is because once you get to six to seven days of fasting, the body recognizes that no additional fuel is coming in, and it starts to prioritize.[00:07:00]

[00:07:00] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Using diseased tissue or foreign proteins as its fuel source because the body is always trying to protect itself and the body wants to preserve vital organs and also lean body mass. And so it starts looking for as diseased tissue that it can use as the fuel. And in this way, the body is starting to feed off of the cancer and gives you this flip from the cancer.

[00:07:29] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Feeding off the body to the body, feeding off the cancer. But this requires prolonged fasting. You need to get at least a six to seven days to start seeing this effect. And then what my mentor had told me when I first started doing this was at nine days you could see some shrinkage of tumor, but if you really wanted to eradicate all cancer from the body a fast of 30 days and sometimes up to 40 days.

[00:07:57] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Is a way to eradicate,~ um,~ cancer [00:08:00] from the body. So that's the third reason why I love fasting, is because it flips the switch on the cancer feeding off the body and starts to allow the body to feed off the cancer and heal itself. The fourth reason is that cancer is associated with a dysfunctional microbiome.

[00:08:19] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And fasting resets the microbiome, creating an opportunity for us to refeed with foods that support a healthy microbiome. And. If you think of this, this is really profound because so many of us are working on healing our microbiomes because the modern lifestyle and the foods that we eat and the sugar that we have and processed foods, even if we've switched to a healthier diet, oftentimes we still have those microbes, and that can be a challenge to make sure that you're feeding the microbes that support health and.

[00:08:58] Dr. Katie Deming MD: You know, uh, [00:09:00] vitality and eliminating those microbes that are problematic for us. But what fasting does, which is beautiful, is it allows us to reset the microbiome and you have die off of those problematic,~ um,~ bacteria. And then when you refeed specifically with foods that support a healthy microbiome, then you.

[00:09:24] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Basically are fueling the body to create this beautiful, healthy microbiome. And this is actually one of the reasons why I started fasting myself, is because many of the fasting centers, they refeed people with a lot of fruit juices and ~um, ~legumes like beans and starches like rice and. Those are problematic for people with cancer in general, if you think about cancer for as a metabolic condition that feeds off glucose, but then also for the microbiome because when you are resetting the [00:10:00] microbiome now you're basically giving a lot of fructose and.

[00:10:05] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Glucose that that can feed the ba bad bacteria again. And so this is one of the things that's really beautiful if you do this in the right way. You have the ability to reset the microbiome in a way that is going to support health. And then you can seal the gut. So you're, you're basically. Really creating this,~ um,~ foundation for health.

[00:10:27] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And if you, you know, listen to many of the experts in health, they'll tell you that a healthy microbiome and a gut, a healthy gut that is not leaky is, is critical to creating health and vitality in the body. So that's number. The fourth reason is that fasting creates the opportunity to reset your microbiome and reestablish it with healthy bacteria.

[00:10:54] Dr. Katie Deming MD: The fifth reason is that healing in my. [00:11:00] Mind and, and in the mind of many people in the space of natural healing comes from higher levels of consciousness. And we see this in stories like Anita Mujani story where she had a near death experience, experienced higher levels of consciousness, and then came back and immediately healed her body because she knew that that was possible.

[00:11:21] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And I've also had similar experience with my shared death experience of having. Access to higher levels of consciousness. And there are ways that people attempt to access higher levels of consciousness through,~ um,~ you know, prolonged meditation. People do it with plant medicine, of course, an NDE,~ um,~ or near death experience can facilitate that.

[00:11:45] Dr. Katie Deming MD: But what's beautiful about water fasting is. Water fasting is a natural way for you to tap into higher levels of consciousness because once you detox the physical toxins out of your body and then the [00:12:00] emotional toxicity comes up and the mental stuff, you start to clear out and you become a real clear channel for higher levels of consciousness, and your antenna is tuned and more.

[00:12:16] Dr. Katie Deming MD: I would say better able to receive information from higher levels of consciousness. And we see that in the fast people have what we would describe as mystical experiences without using any drugs and without having their heart stop or you know, anything like a near death experience. We see that with fasting.

[00:12:36] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And so, you know, it's, it's not an accident that Jesus went into the desert for 40 days. Right. And Siddhartha Buddha, you know, sat under the tree and fasted. So we have these, uh, examples in spirituality. Around fasting and as a tool for higher levels of [00:13:00] consciousness. And so that's another reason why I love fasting is because it allows us to tap into those higher levels.

[00:13:06] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And then the sixth reason is that I. Fasting is like naturals or sorry, fast. And the sixth reason is that fasting is nature's simplest and most elegant healing tool, that this is what animals do. When animals get sick, they stop eating and they go and they ground on the earth. And so this is the most natural, simplest way.

[00:13:37] Dr. Katie Deming MD: For your body to do what it wants to do, which is heal. Your body is designed to heal and is always wanting to bring you back to a state of balance and health and fasting is one of the ways that you can do that. So, and you know, humans have done this through the ages, [00:14:00] right? This is not something we think about this as being so foreign in modern society because, you know, they say feet a cold and all of these things that are actually just flat out wrong.

[00:14:11] Dr. Katie Deming MD: ~Um, but. Fat. Hippocrates even said, you know, to feed a cold or to feed your illness or to, excuse me. So I'm gonna say this. So Hippocrates said this, I, I can't, I'm not gonna get the exact quote correct, but it's like to feed an. To to feed yourself when you're, okay, I'm gonna start this over again. And Hippocrates even said this, that to feed yourself, or to the ~Hippocrates even said this, that to eat when you're sick is to feed your illness.

[00:14:18] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And we've just lost sight of that in modern society. But this is something that has been used over the ages as an and is safe. So there are centers that have done this with, you know, tens of thousands of people and done it safely. You know, fasting out to like 42 days. So this is something that is not new.

[00:14:38] Dr. Katie Deming MD: This is something that is natural and really the. Simplest way to allow your body to heal itself. So, you know, I think this is probably shocking to a lot of people 'cause they think I've lost my mind 30 days of water fasting sounds insane, but, and I, I [00:15:00] thought that too. The first time that I heard this, the first time my mentor brought it to me, I thought, wow, this is really.

[00:15:07] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Scary. Like I, I didn't know what to think about it. I was like, really? Can people do that? And then as I started working with clients and having them fast. I realized that the body is designed to do this. The body does such a beautiful job and is so predictable actually what you see in terms of the detoxification, you know, days four to seven and getting into ketosis around three days, and I.

[00:15:33] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Then, you know, people often will start to notice that their tumors, they have pain in their tumors after about a week, which suggests now the body is, you know, going in there and using those cells for fuel. And I've had some. Remarkable results that I would never have thought was possible when I was practicing western medicine.

[00:15:55] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And the first person that I fasted, you know, they have an, I have an episode [00:16:00] with her on my podcast, Christie, where she fasted for 17 days and her brain tumor. So she had breast cancer that had spread to her brain and she had radiosurgery, which radiosurgery should. It doesn't make the tumor go away, but it basically at three months after radiosurgery, you notice the tumor looks a little bit bigger, but then it starts to shrink on scans, and then it just shows scar tissue, but it never goes away completely on the scans.

[00:16:28] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And then oftentimes there's like kinda what we would call. ~Um, ~on the scan necrosis, but that's like dead tissue around the,~ um,~ tumor from the radiation. So damage from the radiation, that's what you typically see. But on Christie's, MRI, three months after her water fast and having radiosurgery. The brain was pristine, the brain tumor was completely gone, and there was no scarring or necrosis or damage from the radiation.

[00:16:58] Dr. Katie Deming MD: No dead tissue [00:17:00] around where the tumor had been, and her neurosurgeon. I remember this saying. It's gone. And, and she thought, well, yeah, isn't it supposed to be gone? And he is like, no, it doesn't just disappear like that. And her scans have been, her MRI is was clear. She just had a, her one year MRI, a couple months ago.

[00:17:17] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And, and that was still clean. And so that was my first experience realizing that something really. Incredible happens with water fasting. And then my second client who did a 14 day water fast was her surgeon was recommending a mastectomy 'cause she had breast cancer and it had come back in her breast and she did a prolonged water fast.

[00:17:42] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And then on her mammograms, the cancer wasn't there anymore and she didn't end up having to have a mastectomy. So. You know that that obviously got my attention that there is something here. And then what I started to do was I started [00:18:00] to send clients to some of these fasting centers. 'cause there are people who do this.

[00:18:06] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And I was thinking, well my practice was so busy that it'd be nice to have my clients go fast somewhere else. And then, you know, they'd come back to me. There are a couple problems that I found with the fasting centers for people with cancer, and the main one is that with fasting, the biggest risk of prolonged water fasting, and this is actually important for everyone to know, you should not fast more than four days on your own like and refeeding, because the real risk associated with prolonged fasting starts at about five to seven days.

[00:18:42] Dr. Katie Deming MD: When you refeed, you can have. Pretty big shifts in electrolytes that can lead to very significant complications and people have died from Refeeding Syndrome. So this is something that I want to really make clear on this episode. Prolonged water fasting is [00:19:00] never something you would do on your own without some kind of guidance, and the big risk is associated with refeeding.

[00:19:08] Dr. Katie Deming MD: So anyway, these facilities that I've sent my clients to. All of the big facilities that do prolonged water fasting are,~ um,~ founded by doctors who,~ um,~ follow a plant-based diet,~ um,~ low in salt and also low in oils, fats, and. This, in my perspective is, is not the right diet for people with cancer. It's actually quite inflammatory.

[00:19:34] Dr. Katie Deming MD: They refeed people with fruit juices, which fructose, if you think of cancer as a metabolic condition is, is a no-no. So that from a cancer perspective. Using fermentation is definitely not good. And then they also are refeeding with beans that are high in lectins that are inflammatory, not good for people with cancer, and also starches and like rice and basically those, you know, [00:20:00] rice, your body doesn't know the difference between rice and ice cream.

[00:20:02] Dr. Katie Deming MD: It basically is going to go straight into glucose. So that's the first thing. From a metabolic perspective, the refeeding was not. But then also when you think about the microbiome and microbiome is really important. When you're healing cancer by refeeding with those foods, you're then basically,~ um,~ giving the bad bacteria exactly what they want to repopulate.

[00:20:27] Dr. Katie Deming MD: So you undo some of the benefits with the microbiome. So when I started seeing this, I realized. Wow. I can't have people, my client's fasting with these other centers or professionals who are fasting and then refeeding with a plant-based diet. So now I'm fasting my own clients and, and doing it actually in a group fashion where.

[00:20:53] Dr. Katie Deming MD: ~Um, ~people fast remotely, so they fast from their own home. And,~ um,~ we monitor their vitals every day. [00:21:00] So they take their vitals at home and then they get labs once a week. And basically, you know, the supervision is to make sure that they're doing well and they're tolerating the fast well, and, and then ending it if we need to.

[00:21:13] Dr. Katie Deming MD: You know, depending on how their body does or, you know, switching. Sometimes people need to switch to a broth fast, so. ~Um, ~what's been incredible is that doing this with people who want to heal ca cancer naturally in a group setting has been. Even more powerful than when I was just doing it one-on-one because with the one-on-one, people are definitely getting the physical detox.

[00:21:41] Dr. Katie Deming MD: They were getting some of the emotional stuff come up. They obviously were getting the autophagy where the cancer starts to prioritize using the, you know, cancer as it's fuel and also resetting the microbiome. But the. Emotional [00:22:00] aspect and the mental aspect, and then also this spiritual aspect of accessing higher levels of consciousness has really expanded in my group setting.

[00:22:11] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And I think there are a couple reasons for that. Number one, I think that it's really beautiful. To be doing something like a water fast with other people who also believe that healing cancer naturally is possible. Because many of my clients feel really alone like that. Their doctors don't understand them.

[00:22:30] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Their doctors, you know, ridicule them for not wanting to do conventional therapies, and they're looking for other people. You know, they're looking for community, so. There's a sense of community with our people and it's so beautiful because they're all at different phases of fasting. I start new people every Monday, and ~um, ~so we have people at all different phases.

[00:22:50] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Like someone may be on day one and someone else is finishing day 30 and just starting to refeed or you know, a week into refeeding after 30 days of fasting and [00:23:00] seeing other people who've done this and then refeeding and feeling so good and the winds, it's like. It gives such a beautiful sense of,~ um,~ comradery and also excitement for what's possible.

[00:23:15] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And then they support each other so beautifully because one day, one person may be experiencing something and then the next day someone else is gonna experience it and. They, number one, if they've heard it already, they're like, oh, I know what that is because I saw so and so had that yesterday. Or sometimes they'll coach each other, you know, on the calls.

[00:23:34] Dr. Katie Deming MD: They'll say, oh yeah, I had that too last week. And then, you know, it subsided within a couple days. And it's just this sense of being with other people who are in it with you has been really beautiful. And then the other piece that I really. I should have recognized, but I didn't recognize before I started doing this as a group, is that my mentor?

[00:23:56] Dr. Katie Deming MD: So I recently did an episode,~ um,~ it was a bonus episode where [00:24:00] Tom Cowen, who's also one of my mentors,~ um,~ Dr. Tom Coen interviewed me for his podcast. And on that podcast I ended up talking about my, my main mentor, who's really my partner in my practice, Don Javier. And, ~um. ~Don is a very powerful healer and.

[00:24:21] Dr. Katie Deming MD: He is the true apprentice from the books, the Carlos Castaneda books with Don Juan. Don Juan was a very powerful shaman and sorcerer. Carlos Castaneda, who's a anthropologist from Stanford, wrote books about Don Juan, and Carlos had claimed that you know, that he was the apprentice, but the truth was is that Carlos.

[00:24:41] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Purchased those books from John Javier, who at the time was young, you know, in his teens. He sold those stories to Carlos and then Carlos published them as if he was the Apprentice, but he's not. And John Javier is now, you know, a 70-year-old man [00:25:00] and. He is my mentor and really my partner in my practice, he is the one who brought water fasting onto the radar for me because it's an ancient way of healing.

[00:25:13] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And what's beautiful is that Don Javier holds a very high frequency, so he is impeccable, meaning that he, you know. Does exactly what he says. He doesn't get into judgment, he doesn't get into fear. He doesn't get into expectations. He is, I don't even know how to describe him other than I. Just pure love.

[00:25:41] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Like pure love. And he lives that, you know? And he always says to us, show love in the way that you live. But he is a perfect example of that. And because of his impeccability and the power that he holds, he holds a very high frequency. And he holds the [00:26:00] frequency for my healing group. And so they are exposed to that frequency.

[00:26:06] Dr. Katie Deming MD: You know, coming into contact with his frequency is actually what opened my gifts. And I explained that on the episode with Tom Cowan, if you're interested in hearing that. But that's actually when I started opening to higher levels of consciousness is when I came into his. Frequency. And so he holds the frequency for my fasting group, but then also he works on my fasts through the elements.

[00:26:34] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And so, you know, they have this direct energetic connection with him,~ um,~ as part of the process. And so I think of these fasts as like a,~ um. ~It is really like a vision quest, you know, in some of the native,~ um,~ American. Traditions, they talk about going out into the wilderness without, you know, and fasting to [00:27:00] seek answers.

[00:27:00] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Right? And this is Jesus going into the desert and Buddha going under the tree. This is for wisdom. And the fasting is really like a vision quest for my people who are doing it with me, and they are able to. Experience this beautiful cleaning out, but then also being exposed to very high frequencies as they're cleaning out is, is what partly allows them to access higher levels of consciousness.

[00:27:32] Dr. Katie Deming MD: And so for me, I. You know, I'm planning to do my own water fast. I would love to do 30 days, but I'm not sure I can get away from the practice to do it because now I've got people fasting all the time and, and I know that that's a real need that people need. But you know, I'm gonna do at least 14 days myself at the end of this summer and, you know, just as like a reset just for my health.

[00:27:56] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Like I don't have cancer, but. Is such a beautiful [00:28:00] thing to do, and actually if someone doesn't have active cancer fasting. It's such a beautiful thing to your do for your body and also for people who have finished, like say you did chemotherapy or you did other treatments, or you've had surgery and the cancer's removed.

[00:28:18] Dr. Katie Deming MD: Fasting is a beautiful way to detoxify yourself, get out all of that chemotherapy and get yourself kind of reset so that you have a better chance of the cancer not coming back. So. That's what I wanted to share today. I may go into on a future episode, the details of what that looks like. I do have a free webinar that I gave that we'll link to that talks about the logistics and who can fast and what are the contraindications, what are the things that you'd have to think about if you were gonna do this.

[00:28:48] Dr. Katie Deming MD: ~Um, ~so we'll link that in the show notes. But,~ um,~ yeah, I hope you enjoyed this episode and I look forward to seeing you next time. All right, take care. Bye.