Read Transcript
Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.
This podcast is brought to you by Our Place. And I absolutely love this company. And I feel like they are a tremendous resource for moms because we are hearing a lot right now about Forever Chemicals or PFAS. And how, as the name suggests, these chemicals can stay in the body for a really long time. And how they’re present in a lot of places we might not expect from our clothing to our kitchenware and so much more. And for years, once I started understanding Forever Chemicals that are present in things like most nonstick coatings, I avoided them entirely and had intense frustration with my cookware because every single time, everything was getting stuck and dishes got really, really difficult, which is why I was so excited to find Our Place.
They’re a mission-driven, female-founded brand that makes beautiful kitchen products that are effective as well as healthy and sustainable. Their products are made without Forever Chemicals or PFAS and without PTFE or Teflon. So in comparison to most of today’s nonstick pans, they do not contain these chemicals that are coming under global scrutiny right now for their potential far-ranging health problems. A lot of cookware companies still use these chemicals because they’re low cost. And we’re seeing some kind of mislabeling advertising trying to avoid disclosing that. But I feel like companies like Our Place are really leading the charge and creating PFAS-free, durable, non-toxic ceramic coating that let you cook without the frustration and without the toxins. So they have all kinds of amazing products. I first got introduced to them years ago, and I’ve been using their products for years. And right now they are offering a site-wide discount just for listeners of this podcast. So go to fromourplace.com. Make sure to use the code WellnessMama10 to save 10% site-wide. They also offer a 100-day free trial with pre-shipping in return, so trying them is risk-free.
This episode is sponsored by BiOptimizers. I love all of their products and I have been mega-dosing their masszymes for a variety of reasons. But today I want to talk specifically about Magnesium Breakthrough because you might’ve heard me talk about or write about magnesium before. And once I started taking Magnesium Breakthrough, my sleep completely changed and I wake up feeling so energized. It also helps me wind down at night, although I am one of the weird ones that I prefer to take magnesium in the morning and find it really supports my sleep when I do. And here’s why this one’s different. Other forms of magnesium might only be giving you one or two types of magnesium. But Magnesium Breakthrough contains all seven forms designed to calm your mind and help you fall asleep, stay asleep, and wake up refreshed.
And over 75% of the population is magnesium deficient. And this is important because magnesium is vital for hundreds of enzymatic reactions in the body. And what most people don’t know is that even if we’re taking a magnesium supplement, we can still be deficient because we’re not getting all of the forms. And Magnesium Breakthrough is the easiest way I found to get all seven forms in one supplement. So not only does it help me sleep better and calm my mind and body and stay relaxed during the day, it also helps me to have better digestion to recover quicker from exercise. And magnesium is well studied to also support bone density. Most magnesium supplements are ineffective because they only contain a couple forms. And Magnesium Breakthrough is unique in that it contains all seven forms. And I noticed a big difference from this one. For an exclusive offer just for Wellness Mama listeners, go to bioptimizers.com/wellnessmama. Your brain and body will thank you. And if you use the code wellnessmama during checkout, you will save 10%.
Katie: Hello, and welcome to the Wellness Mama podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com, and this episode is what no one tells you about cancer. And I’m here with the Conscious Oncologist, Dr. Katie Deming, for this fascinating interview. She’s a former radiation oncologist and healthcare leader, inventor, and now TEDx speaker who is transcending the boundaries of conventional and integrative medicine to create a new paradigm when it comes to cancer. And cancer healing in particular. Her methods, I loved how deep she went in this episode. She centers on creating methods that help those with cancer detoxify and nourish their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual selves so they can activate their own innate ability to heal. And I really love the depth of experience and perspective that she brings to this interview. So let’s join Dr. Katie. Katie, welcome. Thank you so much for being here.
Dr. Deming: Thank you so much for having me. It’s my pleasure.
Katie: I’m excited for this conversation because I haven’t really gotten to delve into deep talks about cancer yet on this podcast. And from researching your work, I love all the knowledge and wisdom you bring to this topic. Before we jump into that, though, I also have a note from researching in your bio that you were a professional athlete, and I would love to hear what kind of professional athlete you were.
Dr. Deming: Sure. So I was a professional triathlete before I went to medical school.
Katie: That’s awesome. And then I would also love to hear a little bit of your journey and how you transitioned from that, and I’m sure from many other things in your life, into the work that you currently do. Because I feel like you have such a unique perspective and niche in this world, and I can only imagine there was quite a journey behind that.
Dr. Deming: Sure. Well, my background is in neuroscience and biopsychology. That’s what I studied as an undergrad. And then I was trying to decide, okay, do I go into medical school, or do I do research in neuroscience? And I was trying to cross medicine off my list because I thought I didn’t actually want to be around people who would die. And I thought that that would be the hardest part of medical school or training. And so I signed up for hospice initially as a way to cross medicine off my list. And it really changed my life. So being around people who were facing life-threatening illness and reflecting on what was important in their life was really life-changing for me. And that set me into applying to medical school and specifically knowing that I wanted to become an oncologist.
And then I practiced oncology for 20 years. I was a radiation oncologist and also healthcare leader. So ran end-to-end cancer care for a large healthcare organization in the US. And then in 2020, I had a, what the experience is called shared death experience. It’s a lot like a near-death experience, but can happen to doctors, nurses, or emergency personnel who are at the scene where someone passes and they have a metaphysical experience, much like a near-death experience. It’s called a shared death experience. I didn’t know that they existed before it happened to me, but that really changed everything for me. It started to wake me up. And I knew something was wrong in Western medicine, but after that, I knew I had to leave. And I knew that what I was doing was not true healing. And that’s what had led me into the work that I’m doing now as a Conscious Oncologist. And when I use that term, it’s not to say I’m more conscious than someone else. It’s just that my approach is called Conscious Oncology. And that I really believe the foundation of all healing is based in our consciousness.
Katie: This is so fascinating to me. And I also had no idea there was such a thing as shared death experience. In my own lens, I volunteered in nursing homes a lot when I was younger, and I loved those experiences of being with the wisdom of people who were much further along in their life than I was. But I did have a near-death experience with the birth of my third child, which was extremely pivotal and shifted so much of my life. And I feel like for you to have such deep knowledge and have done that work for 20 years. And then to have this massive shift to probably what seems like just seeing more pieces of what is actually going on in this model probably allows you to bring so much more understanding and compassion and empathy, but also knowledge and wisdom to that equation of what I can only imagine must be such a difficult time in someone’s life. You mentioned that that led to you leaving your current work that you were doing, and now you have this new paradigm that you work through. Can you walk us through what some of those things you started to notice and see in the conventional model that maybe weren’t addressing the whole picture?
Dr. Deming: Sure. Well, what happened was that the experience that I had was in 2020, but it took me a couple of years to actually make the leap to leave Western medicine. And part of that was because my husband didn’t understand it. He thought something was wrong with me for I had everything that you would you know think that you could want. I had a career that was meaningful. I made lots of money. We had a very nice lifestyle. And when I said that I was going to leave, I didn’t know actually what I was going to step into.
And so this created a lot of upheaval in my life and ultimately led to me getting a divorce. But basically it took two years to make the decision to make sure I was really clear that I needed to do this. But then when I left, I intentionally did not jump into another training program or a fellowship because I was starting to have questions about the whole system. Like I was worried that if I went and did an integrative fellowship or a functional medicine fellowship, like I just wasn’t sure what was being taught was correct.
And so I really just started to explore. And the biggest things that started to wake up my eyes to the fact that I think we’re completely off base was really around emotions. And there are very big studies like the ACE Study. So the ACE Study is the Adverse Childhood Events Study showing that children who have higher number of emotional traumas as children have a higher incidence of cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes. And this was something I was never taught about, that there was any correlation between emotional trauma and physical illness like cancer. And then also looking at the radical remission data of people who have cured themselves without conventional treatment. Kelly Turner does that work and has 10 factors that are common to those people who have cured themselves. So this is not meaning that these are the things that cause them to cure themselves, but these are all in common. And two of them have to do with emotions. One is learning how to move out of negative emotions and fostering more positive emotions. And the second one was releasing past trauma.
And so this for me was the first thing that I was like, okay, there is something really big here with emotions. And also I had this feeling during the pandemic, because I was still practicing when all of that happened, when everything shut down, that all of the things we were doing were absolutely wrong for helping people heal. I knew isolation was actually harmful for healing in the body and distancing and putting people away from each other. All of this just didn’t make sense to me from an emotional standpoint. And as I started learning the emotional components to healing, it really opened my eyes.
And there’s so much more, but healing is really bringing, the definition is to bring wholeness back to the being. And so for me, it’s really looking at the whole person and what emotional pieces are brought in there. What are their thoughts? How are they, how have they been conditioned with their subconscious mind? Spiritually, are they aligned with who they came here to be? And then all of the physical stuff of the food that we’re eating, whether we’re exercising, grounding, sunlight, all of that stuff is what I now teach in my practice is that we are physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual beings. And in order to heal, we need to look at all of those pieces.
Katie: I love that explanation. And I love that it seems to take into account the whole person, like you said, versus, I mean, the way you explained it, I can see almost like cancer sort of being a symptom and the conventional model targeting just the symptom while ignoring all of the underlying things that could be going on that would of course be slightly different in each person, but they don’t even get necessarily addressed with the focus on just, this is the problem, fix the problem. And so it makes sense that even if I know we hear stories of people who, for instance, recover from one type of cancer and then something else eventually pops up. So it makes sense if we don’t address all those underlying things, it might still just show up somewhere else in the body or in some different way.
And I haven’t had that experience in the cancer world specifically, but I did with Hashimoto’s and actually addressing the emotional trauma side was a massive piece in my recovery from that, but one that I didn’t know of for a long time and then also ignored for a long time until I finally was willing to address it. And so I’m so curious, I would guess cancer especially is a big enough diagnosis that most people, it’s kind of a wake-up call and might be enough to get someone to really want to address the hard things, to shift those, to change their diet or what all the different pieces are. But I would guess there’s also underlying things in there that we can all learn from because hopefully it doesn’t have to take such a drastic diagnosis for someone to shift those things that they wanted to. So can you speak more to some of the pieces that you work with people on addressing and even through the lens potentially for those of us who don’t, that we know of have cancer, but we could address preventatively to hopefully avoid that diagnosis?
Dr. Deming: Absolutely. Well, and I think that this is an important topic and that this is part of what I want to do is to be upstream to help people understand so that fewer people do get cancer. And the statistics today are not great, right? One in three men or sorry, one in three women will get cancer in their lifetime and one in two men in most Western industrialized countries, which is frightening, right?
But I think one of the things to understand is that our modern industrialized life is contributing to our illness and it’s not just cancer. So all conditions that are associated with like a metabolic basis like diabetes, obesity, neurodegenerative disease, cancer, they’re all similar. They’re all stemming from the way that we’re living and we’re living out of connection with nature, out of connection with the nourishment that we were designed to receive when we were living outside in the sun, connecting with the earth, doing physical labor. All of that has really shifted in our lifestyle.
But then on top of that, we’re living a very stressed lifestyle. We’re going faster, we’re disrupting our day/night cycles by being on computers all times of day and night, and then eating in ways that we never were designed to eat. And so for me, it’s a lot of what I teach is let’s get back to the way we were designed. And if you have a question, it’s like, look to how we would have lived a couple hundred years ago. And not that you have to live like that without electricity or without any of this technology but understanding that that is the way that our bodies are designed, that we were designed to have specific inputs. And when we’re living a lifestyle that’s totally disconnected from that, you need to find ways to get that nourishment into your body.
And also you need to find ways to protect your body from the unnatural things that we have all around us like EMFs. And so a lot of what I teach people is just getting back to eating real food and moving your body every day, being in the sunlight. So, I in the morning, I go out and walk around sunrise and I walk also around sunset so that I’m getting all of those rays of light and also going out in the midday. I think one of the things that is a big misdirect is sunscreen and sunglasses. Like those are simple things that you can do less of and do much better.
So there are studies that show that actually wearing sunblock prevents us from getting the nutrients that we need and the vitamin D and then the nitric oxide that helps with our blood pressure and well-being. And same thing with sunglasses, our eyes are designed to register the sun so that it tells the body to produce melanin, right? But when we’re wearing sunglasses, we’re not getting that input. And then we get sunburned because our skin doesn’t know that we’re out in the sun to produce the melanin. So I think it’s just all of these little things that are not super fancy or even complicated, but remembering that we were designed to receive certain inputs and it all comes back to nature.
Katie: I think that’s such a powerful perspective. And not that, like you said, not that we have to go live in a tent in the woods and never interact with the modern environment. But if we can understand it on a deeper level, how can we make our modern environment more friendly to the way we were meant to live in nature and spend more time outside? I would say this is a recurring theme when I’ve talked to Blue Zone experts or experts in various recovery of different types of conditions is there’s this common thread of nature and this disconnect that we’re feeling from living out of alignment with nature. And even in the cancer world, I have much less knowledge and expertise in that area. But I’ve read stories of people who were, for instance, given a terminal diagnosis. And so they didn’t go the conventional treatment route because it wasn’t going to be effective for them, but instead went hiking and spent a lot of time with their family and spent a ton of time in nature and let go. Like they let go of the fear of death. They let go of a lot of negative emotions in that inner work of reconciling with being told that you’re going to die and had spontaneous recovery.
And so it sounds like they maybe figured out some of these pieces you were talking about inadvertently and had what science would deem a miracle or spontaneous recovery. But it sounds like there actually might be a pattern here. And it makes sense to me that as human animals, if we are out of alignment with our environment, that could create problems. And that finding small ways to become more in alignment with our environment could make a massive difference. Even I think often the simple things are underestimated because of their simplicity, but how you just talked about going outside for sunrise and sunset, I think can be so incredibly profound. And we often don’t do it because it’s hard to get up for sunrise for one, but it’s this beautiful free tool that’s available to all of us. And we’re finding out like that light that’s present at sunrise and sunset is red light, which people spend thousands of dollars to buy panels to do in their bedroom, but it’s free for all of us outside at certain times of day. And so I think things like that are so powerful if we’re willing to make them habits.
Dr. Deming: Absolutely. Well, and I think that one of the things about cancer to think about is that cancer is an imbalance of increased toxicity in the body and lowered immune function. And so by increasing our connection with nature and the sun and the earth, we’re basically improving our resiliency in our immune system to deal with the toxicity in our environment, right? And then also we need to be detoxifying, but most people maybe don’t know this is that cancer is common. So it’s common for us to have cancer cells in our body, but our body just takes care of it when it’s functioning properly. And so this is really looking at, okay, the way that you’re bringing the balance back is giving your body what it needs. And then also learning to detoxify the things that are not serving us and not helpful for our body.
Katie: That makes sense. And we started the conversation with you talking about how the mind and the emotions are an often-overlooked piece of this puzzle and in this equation for most people. I would guess also this piece can be really tricky because it’s going to be so unique for each person. But I also hear this as a common thread when people have autoimmune disease, for instance, or when they have any kind of chronic illness, it seems like there’s often an inflammation part of the equation and this mind/emotions piece. And that one seems a little bit tougher to sort of nail down and figure out. So I’m curious how you address that with people when they come to you and if there’s any sort of starting point of tools that you recommend for people, even just to become more aware of that variable in their lives?
Dr. Deming: Sure. Well, I actually see it all the same. When we think about toxicity, toxicity is not just physical toxicity from food or something in our environment. Emotions can be toxic as well as thoughts. And so part of it is, I think one of the things when people hear that emotional trauma is related to cancer or emotions related to cancer, some people get very defensive and like, oh, I have cancer. And now you’re saying it’s my fault. And I just want to be clear. No, that’s not at all what I’m saying, because we are all living in a world that is quite unbalanced emotionally. And also with a lot of the things that are projected out us in terms of thoughts and emotions, fear, all of this. You just have to turn on the news to see that. And so it’s not your fault because we live in this world, but once you see it, you are responsible for figuring out, okay, how is this weighing on me?
And I see emotional trauma is like a backpack that you’re wearing that’s filled with boulders and it’s weighed heavy. And you’re just not even aware because you’re used to carrying it around. You’re really good at handling whatever’s been thrown at you. And you’ve just been walking around with this backpack full of boulders on your back. And what I see the emotional work related to cancer is starting to unpack those boulders. How do we start to lighten your load? You may not even be aware that you’re carrying it but starting to pay attention, Oh, yeah, I’ve got these things that are still weighing on me or that I haven’t forgiven someone for something that they’ve done.
And so for me, techniques around emotional release can be tricky because you can re-traumatize someone with, sometimes people can be re-traumatized in the work. And so when someone is dealing with cancer, I tend to use the techniques that are more dealing with the subconscious because there’s less re-traumatizing and less kind of rehashing the whole story. And so PsychK, that’s P-S-Y-C-H and the letter K is a technique that Bruce Lipton talks a lot about in his book, Biology of Belief, and also his other books. But it is a really simple, easy way to release past traumas and also reprogram the subconscious mind with more powerful stories.
And then the third part of it is it teaches you emotional fluency, which is how to process your emotions. And so I see the release work as taking out some of those boulders out of your backpack, but then we don’t want you putting more in. And so by teaching people how to be with their emotions and learning to ride the wave of the emotion and recognize that emotions are going to have a peak and then a crest, and then they’re going to come down and neutralize. And if we teach people how to be with their emotions and process them in a healthy way, then not only have we removed the backpack, the rocks in the backpack, but we’re not putting more in.
And so that’s the main technique that I find effective, especially with people who have cancer. And we don’t have a lot of time to really work through this and the traumas is doing something like PSYCH-K because it’s quick. And most of my clients, I would say almost every single one who’s ever done it says, I just feel lighter. And that’s my goal is. My goal is to help people feel lighter. So their body can heal because our bodies are designed to heal when they have the right nourishment, when we’re not holding on to things. And so that’s what the emotional work for me is that my focus is really to help them lighten. And I like to use subconscious techniques.
Katie: That seems like that work can be really powerful. And as someone who experienced trauma, I also experienced how, for instance, just talk therapy, unless you’re addressing the subconscious side as well, actually can feel very re-traumatizing or make things harder. Or in my case, I sort of got really good at the game of talk therapy and knew how to say the things I was supposed to say without actually addressing the things I was trying to work on.
But I also love in researching for this, I saw that you had basically you had called cancer a call to awakening. And I love that reframe because I’ve had other guests who have talked about, for instance, if we reframe how we think of even symptoms as messengers or even gifts or as healing responses because it’s our body communicating with us what it needs or doesn’t need. And it is, it’s our body, like you said, wanting to heal, working toward healing and needing something from us to help facilitate that process. I think that’s such a powerful reframe, along with the mindset of kind of seeing yourself well, recognizing the capacity of the body to heal and allowing space for that possibility, which I would guess can be really tough for someone who’s been told words about their diagnosis or what the prognosis is or what the expectations are related to that. But can you elaborate on what you mean by cancer being a call to awakening?
Dr. Deming: Yeah, the way that I see it is that it’s really an invitation. That the cancer is a sign that something is out of balance in your life. And usually it’s not just one thing because with the modern lifestyle, it’s multiple things, right? And as these things add up, they become problematic and then our body demonstrates illness.
And so what I say to people is there’s something here for you and the question is whether you want to step into that and look at what is your body trying to tell you? But the one thing that a lot of people with cancer, this is what I saw in my traditional career was that a lot of people would say, my body has failed me. That I can’t trust my body because if my body is creating cancer, I can’t trust it. And then they put all of their faith and hope in the doctors and just hand it over. And actually, I think that that’s really problematic. I think the system that we’ve created has people hand over their power. And that is not empowering for healing for sure, but then also has people miss this opportunity.
And I love this, the word crisis in Chinese is two symbols. The first symbol is danger, which makes sense, but the second symbol is opportunity. And so in every crisis, there is always opportunity to change, to shift, to create something different. And so this is one of the things that with people who have cancer, even if you do conventional therapy, it’s fine. I actually have no opinions. I feel like everyone needs to do their own thing. So some people are going to do a fully conventional route. Some are going to do a blend. Some are going to not do any conventional therapy. And from my perspective, it’s all perfect, what you need to do for you.
But the one thing that I will say, if you do conventional therapy is you have to recognize that that literally is just killing the cancer cells. So you’re just killing that. And if it’s a symptom of something deeper, you’re missing that. And also those treatments impact the immune system. So basically we’ve now lowered the immune system. We’ve increased toxicity in the body from the treatments, and then we haven’t addressed the underlying cause.
So what I encourage people, even if you are doing traditional therapy is to be open to the invitation, like what is showing itself to me? What in my life is not working and needs to change? Because when you finish this, you don’t want to go back and have it again. You want to fix the problem so that then you can be healthy and vibrant. And I believe that it is never too late, that anyone can heal at any stage.
Katie: From someone who has so much experience in the hands-on of that work, I feel like that’s a very hope-filled message that someone can heal in any stage. And I love that. So that was going to be my next question to you actually was, is there a both and approach? And is there a way to at least integrate with the conventional model, which seems really exciting and hope-filled? And like you said, these are all routes that can lead to something else as well. And so it seems like even if you’re going to do the conventional model, which seemingly would be an important fit for some people in certain cases, I know there’s a lot of nuance there, but to consider that as a both and, and to also accept that invitation, like you said, to address the other underlying things as well. And I would guess there are some people listening who are working through a cancer diagnosis right now or who might get that news at some point in the future. So where can people find your work? And do you work with people currently? Are you accepting anyone new if people want to work one-on-one with you?
Dr. Deming: Sure. So yes, I am seeing clients and open to new clients. My website is katiedeming.com and my podcast is called Born to Heal. And on Born to Heal, I share, I bring on guests who are teaching me because when I left Western medicine, I realized there’s so much I hadn’t been taught that I really needed to know to help people heal. And so I bring on guests to teach me as well as my listeners those things that we’re not hearing in Western medicine. So those are two places you can find me on my website and then also on my podcast.
Katie: I love the name of your podcast. I will include links to both of those in the show notes, as well as you mentioned, The Biology of Belief. I will link to that as well. It’s a great book if you guys haven’t read it. And we’re going to get to record another interview about how to talk to people with cancer, which I think is also a topic that I almost never hear talked about but feels very important. So you guys stay tuned for that episode. But for today, Katie, thank you so much. This has been so fascinating and hopefully very helpful to everyone listening.
Dr. Deming: Thank you. It’s been my pleasure to be here.
Katie: And thank you for listening. And I hope you will join me again on the next episode of The Wellness Mama podcast.
If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.
Leave a Reply